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Title: The Far Horizon

Author: Lucas Malet

Release Date: July, 2005  [EBook #8569]
[This file was first posted on July 24, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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THE FAR HORIZON

BY

LUCAS MALET

(MRS. MARY ST. LEGER HARRISON)




BY THE SAME AUTHOR

_The Wages of Sin_

_A Counsel of Perfection_

_Colonel Enderby's Wife_

_Little Peter_

_The Carissima_

_The Gateless Barrier_

_The History of Sir Richard Calmady_




"Ask for the Old Paths, where is the Good Way, and walk therein, and ye
shall find rest."--JEREMIAS.


"The good man is the bad man's teacher; the bad man is the material upon
which the good man works. If the one does not value his teacher, if the
other does not love his material, then despite their sagacity they must
go far astray. This is a mystery of great import."--FROM THE SAYINGS OF
LAO-TZU.


..."Cherchons a voir les choses comme elles sont, et ne voulons pas avoir
plus d'esprit que le bon Dieu! Autrefois on croyait que la canne a sucre
seule donnait le sucre, on en tire a peu pres de tout maintenant. Il est
de meme de la poesie. Extrayons-la de n'importe quoi, car elle git en
tout et partout. Pas un atome de matiere qui ne contienne pas la poesie.
Et habituons-nous a considerer le monde comme un oeuvre d'art, dont il
faut reproduire les procedees dans nos oeuvres."--GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.




CHAPTER I


Dominic Iglesias stood watching while the lingering June twilight
darkened into night. He was tired in body, but his mind was eminently,
consciously awake, to the point of restlessness, and this was unusual
with him. He had raised the lower sash of each of the three tall, narrow
windows to its extreme height, since the first-floor sitting-room, though
of fair proportions, appeared close. His thought refused the limits of
it, and ranged outward over the expanse of Trimmer's Green, the roadway
and houses bordering it, to the far northwest, that region of hurried
storm, of fierce, equinoctial passion and conflict, now paved with
plaques of flat, dingy, violet cloud opening on smoky rose-red wastes of
London sunset. All day thunder had threatened, but had not broken. And,
even yet, the face of heaven seemed less peaceful than remonstrant, a
sullenness holding it as of troops in retreat denied satisfaction of
imminent battle.

Otherwise the outlook was wholly pacific, one of middle-class suburban
security. The Green aforesaid is bottle-shaped, the neck of it debouching
into a crowded westward-wending thoroughfare; while Cedar Lodge, from the
first-floor windows of which Mr. Iglesias contemplated the oncoming of
night, being situate in the left shoulder, so to speak, of the bottle,
commanded, diagonally, an uninterrupted view of the whole extent of it.
Who Trimmer was, how he came by a Green, and why, or what he trimmed on
it, it is idle at this time of day to attempt to determine. Whether,
animated by a desire for the public welfare, he bequeathed it in high
charitable sort; or whether, fame taking a less enviable turn with him,
he just simply was hanged there, has afforded matter of heated
controversy to the curious in questions of suburban nomenclature and
topography. But in this case, as in so many other and more august ones,
the origins defy discovery. Suffice it, therefore, that the name remains,
as does the open space--the latter forming one of those minor "lungs of
London" which offer such amiable oases in the great city's less
aristocratic residential districts. Formerly the Green boasted a row of
fine elms, and was looked on by discreetly handsome eighteenth-century
mansions and villas, set in spacious gardens. But of these, the great
majority--Cedar Lodge being a happy exception--has vanished under the
hand of the early Victorian speculative builder; who, in their stead, has
erected full complement of the architectural platitudes common to his age
and taste. Dignity has very sensibly given place to gentility.
Nevertheless the timid red, or sickly yellow-grey, brick of the existing
houses is pleasingly veiled by ivy and Virginia creeper, while no shop
front obtrudes derogatory suggestion of retail trade. The local
authorities, moreover, some ten years back girdled the Green with healthy
young balsam-poplar and plane trees and enclosed the grass with iron
hurdles--to rescue it from trampling into unsightly pathways--thus doing
a well-intentioned, if somewhat unimaginative, best to safeguard the
theatre of long ago Trimmer's beneficence or infamy from greater
spoliation.

Hence it follows that, certain inherent limitations admitted, the scene
upon which Dominic Iglesias' eyes rested was not without elements of
attraction. And of this fact, being a person of an excellent temperance
of expectation, he was gratefully aware. His surroundings, indeed,
constituted, so it appeared to him, the maximum of comfort and advantage
which could be expected by a middle-aged gentleman, of moderate fortune,
in the capacity of a "paying guest." Not only in word but in thought--for
in acknowledgment of obligation he was scrupulously courteous. He
frequently tendered thanks to his neighbour and old school-fellow, Mr.
George Lovegrove, first for calling his attention to Mrs. Porcher's
advertisement, and subsequently for reassuring him as to its import. For,
though incapable of forming so much as a thought to her concrete
disparagement, Mr. Iglesias was not without a quiet sense of humour, or
of that instinct of self-protection common to even the most chivalrous of
mankind. He was, therefore, perfectly sensible that "the widow of a
military officer," who describes herself in print as "bright, musical and
thoroughly domesticated," while offering "a cheerful and refined home at
the West End, within three minutes of Tube and omnibus"--"noble dining
and recreation rooms, bath h. and c." thrown in--to unmarried members of
the stronger sex, must of necessity be a lady whose close acquaintance it
would be foolhardy to make without a trifle of preliminary scouting.

Happily not only George Lovegrove, but his estimable wife was at hand.
The latter hastened to prosecute inquiries, beginning with a visit to the
Anglican vicar of the parish, the Rev. Giles Nevington. He reported Mrs.
Porcher an evening communicant at the greater festivals, and a not
ungenerous donor to parochial charities; adding that a former curate had
resided under her roof with perfect impunity. Mrs. Lovegrove terminated
her researches by an interview with the fishmonger, who assured her that
"Cedar Lodge always took the best cuts," sternly refused fish or poultry
which had suffered cold storage, and paid its housebooks without fail
before noon on Thursday. She ascertained, further, from a source socially
intermediate between clergyman and tradesman, that Mrs. Porcher's
husband, some time veterinary surgeon of a crack regiment, had died in
the odour of alcohol rather than in that of sanctity, leaving his widow--in
addition to his numerous and heavy debts--but a fraction of the
comfortable fortune to procure the enjoyment of which he had so
considerately married her. The solid Georgian mansion was her freehold;
and it was to secure sufficient means for continued residence in it that
the poor lady started a boarding-house, or in the politer language of the
present day, had decided to receive paying guests.

Encouraged by the satisfactory nature of the above information, Mr.
Iglesias--shortly after his mother's death, now nearly eight years ago--
had become a member of Mrs. Porcher's household. He had never, so far,
had reason to regret that step. And it was with a consciousness of
well-being and repose that he returned daily--after hours of strenuous
work in the well-known city banking house of Messrs. Barking Brothers &
Barking--to this square first-floor sitting-room, to its dimly white
panelled and painted walls, its nice details of carved work in chimney-
piece and ceiling, and the outlook from its tall, narrow windows. A
touch of old-world stateliness in its aspect satisfied his latent pride
of race. To certain natures not obscurity or slender means, but the
pretentious vulgarity which, in English-speaking countries, too often
goes along with these constitutes the burden and the offence.

To-night, however, things were different. Material objects remained the
same; but the conditions of existence had taken on a strange appearance,
and with that appearance Iglesias was bound to reckon, being uncertain as
yet whether it was destined to prove that of a friend or of an enemy. In
furtherance of such reckoning, he had declined dining at the public
table, in company with his hostess, Miss Eliza Hart, her devoted friend
and companion, and the three gentlemen--Mr. de Courcy Smyth, Mr. Farge,
and Mr. Worthington--who shared with him the hospitalities of Cedar
Lodge. He had dined here, upstairs, solitary; and Frederick, the German-
Swiss valet, had just finished clearing the table and departed. Usually
under such circumstances Iglesias would have taken a favourite book from
the carved Spanish mahogany bookcase containing his small library; and,
reading again that which he had often read before, would have found
therein the satisfaction of friendship, along with the soothing
influences of familiarity. But to-night neither Gibbon's _Rome_--a
handsome early edition in many volumes--_The Travels of Anacharsis_,
Evelyn's _Diary_, Napier's _Peninsular War_, John Stuart Mill's _Logic_,
Byron's _Poems_, nor those of Calderon, nor of that so-called "prodigy of
nature," Lope de Vega, not even the dear and immortal _Don Quixote_
himself, served to attract him. His own thoughts, his own life, filled
his whole horizon, leaving no space for the thoughts or lives of others.
He found himself a prey to a certain mental incoherence, a bewildering
activity of vision. More than once before in the course of his laborious,
monotonous, and, as men go, very virtuous life had this same thing
happened to him--the tides of the obvious and accustomed suddenly
receding and leaving him stranded, as on some barren sand-bank, uncertain
whether the ship of his individual fate would lie there wind-swept and
sun-bleached till rusty rivets fell out and planks parted, disclosing the
ribs of her in unsightly nakedness, or whether the kindly tide, rising,
would float her off into blue water and she would sail hopefully once
again.

It was inevitable that this present experience should recall these other
happenings, evoking memories poignant enough. The first time the ship of
his fate thus stranded was when, as a lad of seventeen, he left school.
Living alone with his mother in a quaint little house in Holland Street,
Kensington, eagerly ambitious to make his way in the world and to obtain,
it had dawned on him that there was something strange, unhappy, and not
as it was wont to be with that, to him, most beautiful and beloved of
women. The mere suspicion was as a blasphemy against which his young
loyalty revolted. For Dominic, with the inherent pieties of his Latin and
Celtic blood, had none of that contemptuous superiority in regard of his
near relations so common to male creatures of the Protestant persuasion
and Anglo-Saxon race. He took his parents quite seriously; it never
having occurred to him that fathers and mothers are given us merely for
purposes of discipline, or as helot-like examples of what to avoid. He
was simple-minded enough indeed to regard them as sacred, altogether
beyond the bounds of legitimate criticism--and this, as destiny would
have it, with intimate and life-long results.

Vaguely, through the mists of infancy, he could remember a hurried
exodus--after sound of cannon and sight of blood--from Spain, the fierce
and pious country of his birth. Since then, while his mother lived--
namely, till he was a man of over forty--always and only the house in the
Kensington side street, with its crooked creaking stairways, its high
wainscots--behind which mice squeaked and scampered--its clinging odour
of ancient woodwork, its low ceilings, and uneven floors. At the back of
it was a narrow strip of garden, glorious for one brief week in early
summer, with the gold of a big laburnum; and fragrant later thanks to
faithful effort on the part of the white jasmine clothing its enclosing
walls. In fair weather the morning sun lay warm there; while the sky
showed all the bluer overhead for the dark lines of the adjacent
housetops, and upstanding deformities in the matter of zinc cowls and
chimney-pots. Frequented by cats, boasting in the centre a rockery of gas
clinkers and chalk flints surmounted by a stumpy fluted column bearing a
stone basin--in which, after rain, sparrows disported themselves with
much conversation and fluttering of sooty wings--the garden was, to
little Dominic, a place of wonder and delight. He peopled it with beings
of his own fancy, lovely or terrific, according to his passing humour.
Granted a measure of imagination, the solitary child is often the
happiest child, since the social element, with its inevitable
materialism, is absent, and the dear spirit of romance is unquenched by
vulgar comment.

His father, grave and preoccupied, whose arrivals after long periods of
absence had in them an effect of secrecy and haste, was to the small boy
a being, august, but remote. During his brief sojourns at home the quiet
house awoke to greater fulness of life, with much coming and going of
other grave personages, strange of dress, and with a certain effect of
hardly restrained violence in their aspect. A spirit of fear seemed to
enter with them, demanding an unnatural darkening of windows and closing
of doors. Before Dominic they were of few words; but became eloquent
enough, in sonorous foreign speech, as his ears testified when he was
banished from their rather electric presence to the solitude of the
nursery above. And so it came about that a sense of mystery, of large
issues, of things at once strong and hidden, impenetrable to his
understanding and concerning which no questions might be asked, encircled
Dominic's childhood and passed into the very fabric of his thought. While
through it all his mother moved, to him tender and wholly exquisite, but
with the reticence of some deep-seated enthusiasm silently cherished,
some far-reaching alarm silently endured, always upon her. And this
resulted in an atmosphere of seriousness and responsibility which
inevitably reacted on the boy, making him sober beyond his years,
tempering his natural vivacity with watchfulness, and pitching even his
laughter in a minor key.

Only many years later, when after his mother's death it became his duty
to read letters exchanged between his parents during this period, did
Dominic Iglesias touch the key to the riddle, and fully measure the
public danger, the private strain and stress which had surrounded his
childhood and early youth. For his father, a man of far from ignoble
nature, but of narrow outlook and undying hatreds, was deeply involved in
revolutionary intrigue of the most advanced type--a victim of that false
passion of humanity which takes its rise not in honest desire for the
welfare of mankind, but in blind rebellion against all forms of
authority. His self-confidence was colossal; all rule being abominable to
him--save his own--all rulers hideous, save himself. The anarchist,
rightly understood, is merely the autocrat, the tyrant, turned inside
out. And this man, as Dominic gathered from the perusal of those old
letters, to whom the end so justified the means that red-handed crime
took on the fair colours of virtue, his mother had loved, even while she
feared him, with all the faithfulness and pure passion of her Irish
blood. Pathetic combination, the patience and resignation of the one ever
striving to temper the flaming zeal of the other, as though the spindrift
of the Atlantic, sweeping inland from the dim sadness of far western
coasts, should strive with relentless fierceness of sunglare outpoured on
some high-lying walled city of arid central Spain! Mist is but a weak
thing as against rock and fire; and what his mother must have suffered in
moral and spiritual conflict, let alone all question of active dread, was
to her son almost too cruel to contemplate, although it explained and
justified much.

In 1860, when Dominic was a schoolboy of fourteen, his father left home
on one of those sudden journeys the object and objective of which were
alike concealed. For about a year letters arrived at irregular intervals,
hailing from Paris, Naples, Prague, and finally Petersburg. Then followed
silence, broken only by rumours furtively conveyed by a former associate,
one Pascal Pelletier--an angel-faced, long-haired, hysteric creature,
inspired by an impassioned enthusiasm for infernal machines and wholesale
slaughter in theory, and, in practice, by a gentle doglike devotion to
Mrs. Iglesias and young Dominic. He would arrive depressed and shadowy in
the shadowy twilights. But, once in the presence of the beings whom he
loved, he became effervescent. His belief was unlimited in the Head
Centre, the Chief, in his demonic power and fertility of resource. That
any evil should befall him!--Pascal snapped his thin fingers; while, with
the inalienable optimism of the born fanatic, he proceeded to state
hopeful conjecture as established fact, thereby doing homage to the
spirit of delusion which so conspicuously ruled him even to his inmost
thought. But a spell of cold weather in the winter of 1862 struck a
little too shrewdly through Pascal's seedy overcoat, causing that tender-
hearted subverter of society to cough his life out, with all possible
despatch, in the third-floor back of a filthy lodging-house off Tottenham
Court Road.

This was the end as far as information went, whether authentic or
apocryphal. But Dominic, his horizon still bounded by the world of
school, greedy of distinction both in learning and in games, away all day
and eagerly, if somewhat sleepily, busy over the preparation of lessons
at night, was very far from realising that. Poor voluble kind-eyed Pascal
he mourned with all his heart; yet the months of his father's absence
accumulated into years almost unnoticed. The same thing had so often
happened before; and then, at an unlooked-for moment, the wanderer had
returned. Moreover, the old habit of obedience was still strong in him.
It was understood that concerning his father's occupations and movements
no comment might be made, no questions might be asked.

Meanwhile, the small house in Holland Street was ever more still, more
unfrequented. As he grew older Dominic became increasingly sensible of
this--sensible of a sort of hush falling on him as he crossed the
threshold, so that instinctively he left much of his wholesome young
animality outside, while his voice took on softer tones in speech, and
his quick light footsteps became more scrupulously noiseless as he ran up
the little crooked stairs.

"When your father comes home we must decide what profession you shall
follow, my Dominic," it had been his mother's habit to declare. But, even
before the time for such decision arrived the boy had begun to understand
he must see to all that unaided. For his mother was ill, how deeply and
in what manner he could not tell. He shrank, indeed, from all clear
thought, let alone speech, on the subject, as from something indelicate,
in a way irreverent. Her beauty remained to her, notwithstanding a
gradual wasting as of fever. A peculiar, very individual grace of dress
and of bearing remained to her likewise. But she was uncertain in mood,
the victim of strange fancies, a being almost alarmingly far removed from
the interests of ordinary life. Long ago, in submission to her husband's
anti-clerical prejudices, she had ceased to practise her religion, so
that the services of the Church no longer called her forth in beneficent
routine of sacred obligation. Now she never left the house, living, since
poor Pascal Pelletier's death, in complete seclusion. Little wonder then
that a hush fell on Dominic crossing the threshold, since so doing he
passed from the world of healthy action to that of acquiescent sickness,
from vigorous hoarse-voiced realities to the intangible sadness of
unrelated dreams! The effect was one of rather haunting melancholy; and
it was characteristic of the lad that he did not resent it, though
rejoicing in the reputation at school of being high-spirited enough,
impatient of restraint or of any frustration of purpose. His mother had
always been sacred. She remained so, even though her sympathies had
become imperfect, and she moved in regions which his sane young
imagination failed to penetrate. One thing was perfectly plain to him,
though it cut at the root of ambition--namely, that he could not leave
her. So, in that matter of a profession, he must find work which would
permit of his continuing to live at home; and, since her income was
narrow, the work in question must make no heavy demand in respect of
preliminary expense.

Here was a problem more easy of statement than of solution, in face of
Dominic's pride, inexperience, and the singular isolation of his
position! There followed dreary months wherein his evenings were spent
in studying and answerings advertisements; and his days, till late
afternoon, in walking the town from end to end for the interviewing of
possible employers and the keeping of fruitless appointments. He would
set forth full of hope and courage in the morning, only to return full of
the dejection of failure at night. And it was then London began to reveal
herself to him in her solidarity, under the cloud of dun-blue coal smoke
--it was wintertime--which, at once hanging over and penetrating her
immensity, adds the majesty of mystery to the majesty of mere size. He
noted how, in the chill twilights, London grew strangely and feverishly
alive. Lamps sprang into clearness along the pavements. A dazzling
glitter of shop windows marked the great thoroughfares, while often the
angry glare of a fire pulsed along the sky-line. When night comes in the
country, so Dominic told himself, the land sinks into peaceful repose.
But in cities it is otherwise. There the light leaves heaven for earth;
and walks the streets, with much else far from celestial, until the
small hours move towards the dawn and usher in the decencies of day.

Never before had he seen London thus and understood it in all its
enormous variety, yet as a unit, a whole. How much he actually beheld
with his bodily eyes, how much through the working of a rather exalted
condition of imagination induced by loneliness and bodily fatigue, he
could never subsequently determine. But the great city presented herself
to him in the guise of some prodigious living creature, breathing,
feeding, suffering, triumphing, above all mating and breeding, terrible
in her power and vitality, age old, yet still unspent. Presented herself
to him as horribly prolific, ever outpassing her own unwieldy limits,
sending forth her children, year after year, all the wide world over by
shipping or by rail; receiving some tithe of them back, proud with
accomplished fortune to enhance her glory, or, disgraced and broken,
slinking homeward to the cover of her fog and darkness merely to swell
the numbers of the nameless who rot and die. He thought of those others,
too--and this touched his young ardour with a quick shudder of personal
fear--whom she never sends forth at all; but holds close in bondage all
their lives long, enslaved to her countless and tyrant activities by
their own poverty, or by their fellow-creatures' misfortune, cruelties,
and sins. Was it thus she was going to deal with him, Dominic Iglesias?
Was he to be among the great city's bondmen through the coming years,
better acquainted with the very earthly light which walks her streets by
night, than with the heavenly light which gladdens the sweet face of day
in the open country and upon the open sea? And for a moment the boy's
heart rebelled, hungry for pleasure, hungry for wide experience, hungry
even for knowledge of those revolutionary intrigues which, as he was
beginning to understand, had surrounded his childhood, and, as he was
beginning to fear, had cost his mother her reason and his father both
liberty and life. Thus did the ship of poor Dominic's fate appear to be
stranded or ever it had fairly set sail at all.

Meanwhile, if London claimed him, she did so in very cynical fashion,
mocking his willingness to labour, refusing to feed him even while she
refused to let him go. Everything, he feared, was against him--his youth,
his foreign name, his limited acquaintance, the impossibility of giving
definite information regarding his father's past occupations or present
whereabouts. Moreover, his spare young figure, his thin shapely hands and
feet, his blue-black Irish eyes and black hair, his energetic colourless
face, his ready yet reticent speech--all these marked him as unusual and
exotic. And for the unusual and exotic the British employer of labour--of
whatever sort--has, it must be conceded, but little use. He is half
afraid, half contemptuous of it, instinctively disliking anything more
alert and alive than his own most stolid self. But while men, distrusting
the distinctness of his personality and his good looks, refused to give
Dominic work, women, relishing them, were only too ready to give him
enjoyment--of a kind. The boy, in those solitary wanderings, ran the
gauntlet of many temptations; and was presented--did he care to accept
it--with the freedom of the city on very liberal lines. Happily, inherent
cleanliness of nature saved him from much; and reverent shame at the
thought of entering the hushed and silent house where his mother lived--
spotless, amid pathetic memories and delicate dreams--with the soil of
licence upon him, saved him from more. Crime might have come close to him
in his childhood, but vice never; and the influences of vice are far more
insidious, and consequently more damaging, than those of crime.

Still, one way and another, the boy came very near touching the confines
of despair. Then the tide rose and the stranded ship of his fate began to
lift a little. By means of a series of accidents--the illness of his
former school-fellow, the already mentioned George Lovegrove, whose post
he offered temporarily to fill--he drifted into connection with the
banking house of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking. There his knowledge
of modern languages, his industry, and a certain discreet aloofness
commended him to his superiors. A minor clerkship fell vacant; it was
offered to him. And from thenceforth, for Dominic Iglesias, the monotony
of fixed routine and steady labour, until the day when, as a man of past
fifty, restless and somewhat distrustful both of the present and the
future, he watched the dying of the sullen sunset over Trimmer's Green
from the windows of the first-floor sitting-room of Cedar Lodge.




CHAPTER II


That which had in point of fact happened was not, as Iglesias felt,
without a pretty sharp edge of irony. For to-day, London, so long his
task-mistress and gaoler, had assumed a new attitude towards him.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, she had cast him off, given him his freedom. It
was amazing, a thing to take your breath away for the moment. And
agitated and hurt--for his pride unquestionably had suffered in the
process--Iglesias asked himself what in the world he should do with this
gift of freedom, what he should do, indeed, with that which remained to
him of life?

It had come about thus. Seeking an interview that morning with Sir Abel
Barking, in the latter's private room at the bank, he had made certain
statements regarding his own health in justification of a request for
some weeks' rest and holiday now, rather than later, in September, when
his yearly vacation would fall due.

"So you find yourself unequal to dealing satisfactorily with the
increasing intricacy of our financial operations, become confused by the
multiplicity of detail, suffer from pains in the head?" Sir Abel had
commented, with a certain largeness of manner. "I own, my good friend, I
was not wholly unprepared for this announcement."

"My work has not so far, I believe, suffered in any respect," Iglesias
put in quietly. "Directly I had reason to fear it might suffer I----"

"Of course, of course. I make no complaint--none. I go further. I admit
that the area of our undertakings is enlarged, enormously enlarged,
thanks to the remarkable personal energy and strenuous transatlantic
business methods introduced by my nephew Reginald. I grant you all
that----"

Sir Abel cleared his throat. Seduced by the charms of his own eloquence,
he was ready to mount the platform at the shortest possible notice, even
in private life. He loved exposition. He loved periods. His critics--for
what public man is without these, their strictures naturally inspired by
envy?--had been known to add that he also loved platitudes. Be this as it
may, certain it is that he loved an audience--even of one. He had been
considerably ruffled this morning by communications made to him by his
good-looking and somewhat scapegrace youngest son. Those who fail to rule
their own households often find solace in attempting to rule the
households of others. Speech and patronage consequently tended to the
restoration of self-complacency.

"No doubt this expansion, these modern methods, constitute a tax upon
your capacity, my good friend, you having acquired your training under a
less exacting system. I am not surprised. I confess"--he leaned back in
his chair, with an indulgent smile, as one who should say, "the gods
themselves do not wholly escape"--"I confess," he repeated, "it is
something of a tax upon the capacity of a veteran financier such as
myself. But then strain in some form or other, as I frequently remind
myself, is the very master-note of our modern existence. We all
experience it in our degree. And there are those men, such as myself, for
instance, who from their position, their vast interests and heavy
responsibilities, from the almost incalculable issues dependent on their
judgment and their action, are called upon to endure this strain in its
most exhausting manifestations, who are compelled to subordinate personal
case, even health itself, to public obligation. In the end they pay,
incontestable they pay, for their self-abnegation, for their unswerving
obedience to the trumpet-call of public duty."

He paused and mused a while, his head raised, his right hand resting--it
was noticeably podgy and squat--on the highly polished surface of the
extensive writing-table, his left hand dropped, with a rather awkward
negligence, over the arm of his chair. Meanwhile he gazed, as pensively
as his caste of countenance permitted, at a portrait of himself, in the
self-same attitude, which adorned the opposite wall. It had been
presented to him by the electors of his late constituency. It was life-
size and full-length. It had been painted by a well-known artist whose
appreciation of the outward as a revelation of the inward man is slightly
diabolic in its completeness. The portrait was very clever; it was also
very like. Looking upon it no sane observer could stand in doubt of Sir
Abel's eminent respectability or eminent wealth. His appearance exuded
both. Unluckily nature had been niggardly in the bestowal of those more
delicate marks of breeding which, both in man and beast, denote
distinction of personality and antiquity of race. Pursy, prolific,
Protestant, a commonness pervaded the worthy gentleman's aspect, causing
him, as compared with his head clerk, Dominic Iglesias--standing there
patiently awaiting his further utterance--to be as is a cheap oleograph
to a fine sketch in pen and ink. It may be taken as an axiom that, in
body and soul alike, to be deficient in outline is a sad mistake. But of
all these little facts and the result of them, Sir Abel was, needless to
relate, sublimely ignorant.

"With you, my good friend, it is otherwise," he remarked presently,
reluctantly removing his gaze from the portrait of himself. "A beneficent
Providence has devised the law of compensation. And we may remark the
workings of it everywhere with instruction and encouragement. Hence
social obscurity has its compensating advantages. You, for example, are
affected by none of those considerations of public obligation binding
upon myself. You are so situated that you can avoid the more trying
consequences of this universal overstrain. If the demands of the position
you now fill are too much for you, you can retire. I congratulate you,
Iglesias. For some of us it is impossible, it is forbidden to retire."

The speaker paused, as when in addressing a political or charitable
meeting he paused for well-merited applause, secure of having made a
telling point. Dominic Iglesias, however, had not applauded. To tell the
truth, his back was stiffening a little. He had a very just appreciation
of the relative social positions of himself and his employer; still it
did not occur to him, somehow, that applause was necessarily in the part.

"You have the redress in your own hands," Sir Abel went on, not without a
hint of annoyance. "If you need amusement, leisure, rest, they are all
within your reach."

Still Iglesias did not speak.

"See now, my good friend, consider. To be practical"--Sir Abel raised his
finger and wagged it, with a heavy attempt at _bonhomie_. "You have no
family to provide for?"

"No," said Mr. Iglesias.

"You are, in short, not married?"

"No, Sir Abel," he said again.

"Well, then, no obstacle presents itself. But let us pause a moment, for
I must guard myself against misconception. In the interests of both
public and private morality I am a staunch advocate of marriage." Again
he cleared his throat. The platform was conspicuous by its presence--in
idea. "I hold matrimony to be among the primary duties, nay, to be the
primary duty of the Christian and the citizen. We owe it to the race, we
owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the opposite sex. Let us be quite clear
on this point. Yet, since I deprecate all bigotry, I admit that there may
be exceptional cases in which absence of the marital relation, though
arguing some emotional callousness, may prove advantageous to the
individual."

A queer light had come into Dominic Iglesias' eyes. The corners of his
mouth worked a little. He stood quite still and rather noticeably erect.

"I do not deny this," Sir Abel continued. "I repeat, I do not deny it.
And yours, my good friend, may be, I am prepared to acknowledge, a case
in point. I take for granted, by the way, that you have saved, since your
salary has been a liberal one?"

Iglesias inclined his head.

"Clearly we need discuss this matter no further then." The speaker became
impressive, admonitory. "Indeed, it appears to me that your lot is a most
favoured one. You are free of all encumbrances. You can retire in
comfort--retire, moreover, with the assurance that your departure will
cause no inconvenience to myself and my colleagues, since you make room
for men younger and more in touch with modern methods than yourself."

Mr. Iglesias permitted himself to smile.

"Ah, yes!" he said. "Possibly I had not taken that fact sufficiently into
account."

"Yet, clearly, it should augment your satisfaction," Sir Abel Barking
observed, with a touch of severity. "And, by the by, you can draw your
pension. You were entitled, strictly speaking, to do so some years ago--
four, I believe, to be accurate. This was pointed out to you at the time
by my nephew Reginald. He was not at all unwilling that you should retire
then; but you preferred to remain. I had some conversation, at the time,
with my nephew on the subject. I insisted upon the fact that your service
had been exemplary. I finally succeeded in overruling his objection to
your retaining your post."

"I am evidently under a heavy obligation to you, Sir Abel," said
Iglesias.

"Don't mention it--don't mention it," the great man answered nobly.
"Those in power should try to exercise it to the benefit of their
subordinates. It has always been my effort not only to be just, but to be
considerate of the interests and feelings of persons in my employment."

And with that he again fixed his eyes upon the ironical portrait adorning
the opposite wall, wholly blind to the fact that it at once revealed his
weaknesses and mocked at them, conscious only of an agreeable conviction
that he had treated his head clerk with generosity and spoken to him with
the utmost good-feeling and tact.

With the proud it is ever a question whether to spoil the Egyptians, or
to fling back even the best-earned wages, payable by Egyptians, full in
the said Egyptians' face. For the firm of Barking Brothers & Barking, in
the abstract, Iglesias had the loyalty of long-established habit. It had
been as the rising tide, setting the ship of his fate and fortune
honourably afloat in the dismal days of that early stranding. Its service
had eaten up the best years of his life, it is true. But, even in so
doing, by mere force of constant association, the interests of the great
banking house had come to be his own, its schemes and secrets his
excitement, its successes his satisfaction. Fortunately the human mind is
so constituted that it is possible to have an esteem, amounting to
enthusiasm, for a body corporate, while entertaining but scanty
admiration for the individuals of whom that body is composed--fortunately
indeed, since otherwise what government, secular or sacred, would long
continue to subsist? Hence, to Iglesias, this matter of the pension was
decidedly difficult. Pride said, "This man, Abel Barking has been
offensive; both he and his nephew have been ungrateful; reject it with
contempt." Justice said, "You have no quarrel with the firm as a whole;
accept it." Common sense, pricked up by anger, said, "Claim your own,
take every brass farthing of it." While personal dignity, winding up the
case, admonished, "By no means give yourself away. Make no impetuous
demonstration. Go home and think it quietly over." And with the advice of
personal dignity Mr. Iglesias fell in.

Yet he was still very sore, the heat of anger past, but the smart of it
remaining, when he journeyed back from the city later in the day. And not
only that after-smart, but a perplexity held him. For two strange faces
had looked into his during the last few hours--those of Loneliness and
Freedom. He had taken for granted, in a general sort of way, that such
personages existed and exercised a certain jurisdiction in human affairs.
But in all the course of his laborious life they had never before come
close, personally claiming him. He had had no time for them. But they are
patient, they only wait. They had time for him--plenty of it. Suddenly he
understood that; and it perplexed him, for his estimate of his own
importance was modest. He even felt apologetic towards them, as one at
whose door distinguished guests alight for whose entertainment he has
made no adequate provision. He was embarrassed, his sense of hospitality
reproaching him.

It so happened that, on this same return journey, he occupied the seat on
the right, immediately behind that of the driver. The sky was covered,
the atmosphere close. The horses, grey ones, showed a thick yellowish
lather where the collar rubbed their necks and the traces their flanks.
They were slack and heavy, and the omnibus hugged the curb. Within it was
empty, and on the top boasted but three passengers besides Iglesias
himself. It followed that, carrying insufficiency of ballast, the great
red-painted vehicle lumbered, and jerked, and swayed uneasily; while the
lighter traffic swept past it in a glittering stream, the dominant note
of which was black as against the dirty drab of the recently watered
wood-pavement. And the character of that traffic was new to Dominic
Iglesias, though he had travelled the Hammersmith Road, Kensington High
Street and Kensington Gore, Knightsbridge and Piccadilly, back and forth
daily, these many years. For the exigencies of business demanding that
the hours of his journeying should be early and late, always the same, it
came about that the aspect of these actually so-familiar thoroughfares
was novel, as beheld in the height of the season at three o'clock in the
afternoon.

At first Iglesias saw without seeing, busy with his own uncheerful
thoughts. But after a while he began to speculate idly on the scene
around him, turning to the outward and material for distraction, if not
for actual comfort. And so the stream of carriages and hansoms, and the
conspicuously well-favoured human beings occupying them, began to
intrigue his attention. He questioned whom they might be and whither
wending, decked forth in such brave array. They seemed to suggest
something divorced from, yet native to, his experience; something he had
never touched in fact, yet the right to which was resident in his blood.
And with this he ceased, in instinct, to be merely the highly respected
and respectable head clerk of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking--now
superannuated and laid on the shelf. A gayer, fiercer, simpler life,
quick with violences of vivacious sound and vivid colour, the excitement
of it heightened by clear shining southern sunshine and blue-black
shadow--a life undreamed of by conventional, slow-moving, rather vulgar
middle-class London--to which, on the face of it, he appeared as
emphatically to belong--awoke and cried in Dominic Iglesias.

It was a surprising little experience, causing him to straighten up his
lean yet shapely figure; while the burden of his years, and the long
monotony of them, seemed strangely lifted off him. Then, with the air of
courtly reserve--at once the joke and envy of the younger clerks, which
had earned him the nickname of "the old Hidalgo"--he leaned forward and
addressed the omnibus driver. The latter upraised a broad, moist and
sleepy countenance.

"Polo at Ranelagh," he answered, in a voice thickened by dust and the
laying of that dust by strong waters. "Club team plays 'Undred and First
Lancers."

The words had been to the inquirer pretty much as phrases from the
liturgy of an unknown cult. But it was Iglesias' praiseworthy disposition
not to be angry with that which he did not happen to understand, so much
as angry with himself for not understanding it.

"Only an additional proof, were it needed, of the prodigious extent of my
ignorance!" he reflected in stoically humorous self-contempt. His eyes
dwelt, somewhat wistfully, on the glittering stream of traffic, once
again those two unbidden guests, Loneliness and Freedom--for whose
entertainment he had made inadequate provision--sitting, as it seemed,
very close on either side of him. Then that happened which altered all
the values. Dominic Iglesias suddenly saw a person whom he knew.

He had seen that same person about three hours previously in the bank in
Threadneedle Street, while waiting for admittance to Sir Abel's private
room. Rumour accredited this handsome young gentleman--Sir Abel's
youngest son--with tastes expensive rather than profitable, liberal
socially, rather than estimable ethically, declaring him to be distinctly
of the nature of the proverbial thorn in the banker's otherwise very
prosperous side. He had, so said rumour, the fortune or misfortune, as
you chose to take it, of being at once a considerably bad boy and a
distinctly charming one. Be all that as it might, the young man had
certainly presented a grimly anxious countenance when, without so much as
a nod of recognition, he had stalked past Mr. Iglesias in the dim light
of the glass and mahogany-walled corridor. But now, as the latter noted,
his expression had changed, and that very much for the better. The young
man's face was flushed and eager, and his teeth showed white and even
under his reddish brown moustache. If anxieties still pursued him they
were in subjection to one main anxiety, the anxiety to please, which of
all anxieties is the most engaging and grace-begetting.

Just then the traffic was held up, thus enabling Iglesias from his perch
on the 'bustop to receive a more than fleeting impression. Two ladies
were seated opposite the young man in the carriage. In them Iglesias
recognised persons of very secure social standing. The elder he supposed
to be Lady Sokeington--Alaric Barking's half-sister--to whom, on the
occasion of her marriage, twelve or thirteen years ago, he had had the
expensive honour of presenting, in his own name and that of his
colleagues, a costly gift of plate. The other lady, so it appeared to
him, was eminently sweet to look upon. She was very young. She leaned a
little forward, and in the pose of her delicate figure and the carriage
of her pretty head--under its burden of pale pink and grey feathers,
flowers, and lace--he detected further example of that engaging anxiety
to please. They made a delightful young couple, the fair seeming of this
life and riches of it very much on their side. Mr. Iglesias' chivalrous
heart went out to them in silent sympathy and benediction; while, the
block being over, his gaze continued to follow them as long as the young
girl's slender white-clad back and the young man's flushed and eager face
remained distinguishable. Then he started, for he was aware that his
unbidden companions had received unexpected reinforcement. A third guest
had arrived, and looked hard and critically at him. It's name was Old
Age, and he found something sardonic in its glance. With all his
gentleness of soul, all his innate self-restraint, there remained
fighting blood in Dominic Iglesias. Therefore, for the moment,
recognising with whom he had to deal, a light anything but mild visited
his eyes, and a rigidity the straight lines of his chin and lips. Old Age
is a sinister visitant even to those who are moderate in demand and clean
of life. For it gives to drink of the cup not of pleasure, but merely of
patience, of physical loss and intellectual humiliation; and, once it has
laid its spell upon you, you are past all remedy save the supreme remedy
of death. And so, at first sight, Iglesias rebelled--as do all men--
turning defiant. Then, being very sane, he gave in to the relentless
logic of fact. Silently, yet with all courtesy, he acknowledged the
newcomer, and bade it be seated along with the rest. While, after brief
pause to rally his pride, and that courage which is the noblest attribute
of pride, he turned to things concrete and material once more, finally
addressing himself to the omnibus driver:

"Pardon me; polo, as I understand, is a species of game?"

The broad moist countenance was again uplifted, a hint of patronage now
tempering its good-natured apathy.

"Sort'er 'ockey on 'orseback."

"That must be sufficiently dangerous," Mr. Iglesias remarked.

"Bless you, yes. Players breaks their backs pretty frequent, and cuts the
ponies about most cruel--"

He ceased speaking abruptly, jammed the brake down with his heel in
response to the conductor's bell, and drew the sweating horses up short
to permit the ingress of fresh passengers. This accomplished, the omnibus
lumbered onwards while Dominic Iglesias fell into further meditation.

The explanation vouchsafed him was still far from explicit; yet this much
of illumination he gained from it, namely, the assurance that all these
goodly personages, Alaric Barking and his sweet companion among them,
were on pleasure bent. One and all they fared forth, on this heavy summer
afternoon, in search of amusement--in search of that intangible yet very
powerful factor in human affairs to which it is given to lift the too
great weight of seriousness from mortal life, cheating perception of
relentless actualities, helping to restore the balance, helping men to
hope, to laugh, and to forget. Perceiving all which, conscious moreover
of the near neighbourhood of Loneliness on the right hand and Old Age on
the left, Iglesias began to bestow on these votaries of pleasure a more
earnest attention, recognising in them the possessors of a secret which
it greatly behoved him to enter into possession of likewise. In what, he
asked himself, did it actually consist, this to him practically unknown
quantity, amusement? How was the spirit of it cultivated, the enjoyment
of it consciously attained? How far did it reside in inward attitude, how
far in outward circumstance? In a word, how did they all do it? It was
very incumbent upon him to learn, and he admitted a ridiculous ignorance.




CHAPTER III


Thus had the chapter of labour ended, and that of leisure opened. And it
was with the sadness of things terminated very strongly upon him that, as
Frederick, the German-Swiss valet, finished clearing the dinner-table and
departed, Mr. Iglesias looked forth over the neatly protected verdure of
Trimmer's Green in the evening quiet. The smugly pacific aspect of the
place irritated him. He was aware of a great emptiness. And very
certainly the scene before him offered no solution of the problem of the
filling of that emptiness. And somehow or other it had to be filled--
Iglesias knew that, knew it through every fibre of him--or life would be
simply insupportable. Meanwhile from the public drawing-room below came
sounds of revelry, innocent enough yet hardly calculated to soothe over-
strained nerves. Little Mr. Farge--whose thin and reedy tenor carried as
does a penny whistle--gave forth the refrain of a song just then popular
in metropolitan music-halls.

"They're keeping latish hours at the Convalescent Home," piped Mr. Farge;
while his friend and devout admirer, Albert Edward Worthington, tore at
the banjo strings and the ladies tittered.

Iglesias listened in a somewhat grim spirit of endurance. On the far side
of the Green he could see the gaslights in the Lovegroves' dining-room.
These appeared to watch him rather uncomfortably, as with three
supplicating and reproachful eyes. He debated whether he would not take
his hat, step across, and tell his old friend what had happened--it would
at least relieve him of the sound of little Farge's serenading. But his
pride recoiled somehow. Good souls, man and wife, they would be full of
solicitude and kindness; but they would say the wrong thing. They would
not understand. How, indeed, should they, being wholly at one with their
surroundings--unimaginative, domestic, British middle-class, with its
virtues and limitations aggressively in evidence? George Lovegrove would
suggest some minor municipal office, or membership of the local borough
council, as a crown of consolation. His wife would skirt round the
subject of matrimony. She had done so before now; and Iglesias, while
presenting a dignified front to the enemy, had inwardly shuddered. She
was an excellent, estimable woman; but when ponderously arch, when
extensively sly! Oh, dear no! It didn't do. Her gambols were too sadly
suggestive of those of a skittish hippopotamus. Dominic Iglesias was
conscious that he had a skin too little to-night; he could not witness
them with philosophy. The kindliest intention, the best-meant words,
might cause him extravagant annoyance.

He turned away from the window and took a turn the length of the room--a
tall, distinct, and even stately figure in the thickening dusk. He felt
rather horribly desolate. He was fairly frightened by the greatness of
the emptiness, within and about him, engendered by absence of employment.
He had little to reproach himself with. His record was cleaner than most
men's--he could not but know that. He had sacrificed personal ambition,
personal happiness, to the service of one supremely dear to him. Not for
a moment did he regret it. Had it to be done all over again, without
hesitation he would do it. Still there was no blinking facts. Here was
the nemesis, not of ill living, but of good--namely, emptiness,
loneliness, homelessness, Old Age here at his elbow, Death waiting there
ahead.

"The routine has gone on too long," he said to himself bitterly. "I have
lost my pliability, lost my humanity. I am a machine now, not a man. To
the machine, work is life. Work over, life is over; and the machine is
just so much lumber--better broken up and sent to the rag and bottle
shop, where it may fetch the worth of its weight as scrap-iron."

He turned, came back to the open window again and stood there, rather
carefully avoiding the three reproachful eyes of the Lovegroves' dining-
room gaselier, and fixing his gaze on that sullen fierceness of sunset
still hanging in the extreme northwest.

"Unluckily there is no rag and bottle shop where superannuated bank
clerks of five-and-fifty have even the very modest market value of scrap-
iron!" he went on. "Of all kinds of uselessness, that of we godlike human
beings is the most utterly obvious when our working day is past. Mental
decay and bodily corruption as the ultimate. And, this side of it, a few
years of increasing degradation, a mere senseless killing of time until
the very unpleasing goal is reached--along with a growing selfishness,
and narrowness of outlook; along, possibly, with some development of
senile sensuality, the more detestable because it lacks the provocations
of hot blood. Oh! Dominic Iglesias, Dominic Iglesias, is that the ugly
road you are doomed to travel--a toothless greed for filling your belly
with fly-blown dainties off the refuse-heap?"

And through the open window, in sinister accompaniment to little Mr.
Farge's sophisticated and unpastoral pipings, came the voice of the great
city herself in answer--low, multitudinous, raucous, without emphasis but
without briefest relief of interval or of pause. And this laid hold
strongly of Iglesias' imagination, reminding him of all the intimate
wretchedness of that first stranding of the ship of his fate. Reminding
him of his long and fruitless trampings in search of employment--good
looks, energy, youth itself, seeming but an added handicap--when London
revealed herself to him in her solidarity, revealed herself as a
prodigious living creature, awful in her mysterious vigour, ever big with
impending birth, merciless with impending death. As she showed herself to
him then, with life all untried before him, so she showed herself still
when, in the blackness of his present humour, all life worth the name
appeared over and passed. He had changed, so he believed, to the point of
nullity and final ineptitude. She remained strong, active, relentless as
ever. As long ago, so now, she struck him as monstrous. Yet now, though
all the conditions were changed, he had, as long ago, an instinct that
from her there was no escape.

"I have served you honestly enough all these years," he said--since she
had voice to speak, she had also ears to hear, mayhap--"and you have
taken much and given little. To-day you have turned me off, told me to
quit. But where, I ask you, can I go? I am too stiffened by work,
unskilled in travel, too unadaptable to begin again elsewhere. Moreover,
you hold the record of my experience, all my glad and sorrowful memories.
I might try to leave you, but it's no use. I am planted and rooted in
you, monstrous mother that you are. If I know myself, I should go only to
come back."

For the moment the calm of long self-control was broken up within him.
Dominic Iglesias dwelt, consciously and sensibly, in the horror of the
Outer Darkness--which horror is known only to that small and somewhat
suspect minority of human beings who are also capable, by the operation
of the divine mercy, of dwelling in the glory of the Uncreated Light. The
swing of the pendulum is equal to right as to left. He was staggered by
the misery of his own isolation--a stranger, as he suddenly realised, by
temperament and ideals, as well as by race! Then resolutely he turned his
back on this, with an instinct of self-preservation directing his thought
to things practical and average.

For example, that question of the pension--concerning which he now found,
to his slight surprise, he was no longer the least in doubt. This money
was his by right. The hard strain in his nature was dominant--to the full
he would claim his rights. And since in moments of despair the human mind
invariably requires a human victim, be it merely a simulacrum, a waxen
image of a man to melt in the fires of its humiliation and revolt,
Iglesias remembered, with much contemptuous satisfaction, the ironical
portrait of Sir Abel Barking adorning the wall of the latter's private
room at the bank. He hailed the diabolic talent of the artist who had
laid bare with such subtle skill the flatulence of his sitter. It was a
pretty revenge, very assuaging just now to Iglesias. For the real man, as
he reflected, was not the man who sat heavily self-complacent in a
library chair, exuding platitudes and pride of patronage; but the man who
hung upon the wall forever ridiculous while paint and canvas should last.
Thus would he go down to posterity! And to Dominic Iglesias, just now, it
seemed very excellent that posterity should know him for the wind-bag
hypocrite he essentially was. Securely entrenched behind his own large
prosperity, uxoriousness, paternity, had he not counted his, Iglesias',
blessings to him; counselling amusement, rest, congratulating him on just
all that which made for his present distress--namely, his obscure
position, his enforced idleness, his absence of human ties, the general
meagreness of his state in life? The more he thought of the incident, the
more it filled him with indignation and disgust. Therefore, very
certainly he would claim his pension; claim an infinitesimal but actual
fraction of this man's great wealth; would live long so as to claim it as
long as possible, till the paying of it, indeed, should become a
weariness to the payer. And he would spend it, too, unquestionably he
would. Mr. Iglesias' rare and gracious smile had an almost cruel edge to
it.

"The machine shall become a man again," he said. "And the man shall amuse
himself. How, I don't yet know, but I will find out. Work has made me
dull and inept."

He straightened himself up, tired, yet unbroken, defiant, aware--though
the horror of the Outer Darkness was yet upon him--of purpose still
militant and unspent.

"Play may make me the reverse of dull and inept. I have always been
diligent and methodical. I will continue to be so. This enterprise admits
of no delay. I will begin at once, begin to-morrow, to amuse myself."

It is characteristic of the Latin to see things written in fire and
blood, which the slower-brained Anglo-Saxon only sees written in red
paint--if, indeed, he ever arrives at seeing them written at all. To-
night the Latin held absolute sway in Dominic Iglesias. With freedom had
come a curious reversion to type. His humour, like his smile, was a
trifle cruel. He observed, criticised, judged, condemned unsparingly, all
mental courtesies in abeyance. When, therefore, at this juncture the
three eyes of the Lovegroves' dining-room gaselier winked slowly, and
closed their lids--so to speak--ceasing to watch and to supplicate, he
suffered no self-reproach. The good, simple couple were shutting up house
and going to bed, he supposed. They sought repose betimes; and, unless
supper had been more aggressively cold and heavy than usual, slept, till
broad day, a dreamless sleep. Decidedly it was well he had not taken his
hat and stepped across to visit them, for, beyond all question, they
would not have understood! The voice of London, for instance, meant
nothing to them. They had no notion London had a voice. Still less had
they any notion she was a prodigious living creature. London was the
place where they resided--that was all, and, since the streets are
admittedly noisy and dusty, they had taken a house in this genteel and
convenient suburb. Of the tremendous life and force of things, miscalled
man-made and inanimate, they had no faintest conception. Small wonder
they went to bed betimes and slept a dreamless sleep! Thinking of which--
notwithstanding their kindness and affection--they became, just now, to
Iglesias as truly astonishing phenomena in their line as Sir Abel Barking
in his. He saw in them merely specimens, though good ones, of the great
majority of the British public, a public so overlaid and permeated by
convention, so parochial in outlook, so hidebound by social tradition and
insular prejudice, that it is really less in touch with everlasting fact
than the animals it pets, demoralises, and eats. These at least have
instinct, and so are at one with universal nature. In perception, in
spontaneity of action, good Mrs. Lovegrove was as an infant compared to
her parrot or her pug. So was little Mr. Farge with his sophisticated
warblings--so, for that matter, were all the other persons among whom
his, Iglesias', lot was cast. His sense of isolation deepened. If
amusement was his object, most certainly the society of Trimmer's Green
would not supply it. He must look further afield for all that.

In the far northwest the last of the sunset had faded; only the cloud
remained. Yet the horizon, above the broken line of the house-roofs and
chimney-pots, pulsed with light--the very earthly light which, in great
cities, flares out when the light of heaven dies, to walk the streets,
with much else of doubtful loveliness, till it is shamed by the cold
chastity of dawn. And along with that outflaring, a certain meretricious
element introduced itself into the aspect of Trimmer's Green. Across the
roadway, the gaslamps showed cones of vivid yet sickly brightness,
bringing at regular intervals the sharply indented leaves of the plane
trees and the shivering silver of the balsam-poplars into an arresting
and artificial distinctness. Between were spaces of vacancy and gloom.
And from out such a space, immediately opposite, slowly emerged a
shambling and ungainly figure, in which Dominic Iglesias recognised the
third of his fellow-lodgers, Mr. de Courcy Smyth. His acquaintance with
the said lodger was of the slightest, since the latter had but recently
entered into residence and rarely appeared at meals. Mrs. Porcher
habitually referred to him with a pitying respect as "a gentleman very
influential in literary and professional circles, but unfortunate in his
married life"; ending with a sigh and upward glance of her still fine
eyes, as one who could sympathise, having herself been through that gate.
Influential or not, it occurred to Iglesias that the man presented a
sorry spectacle enough. For a minute or so he stood aimlessly in the full
glare of a gaslamp. His thin, creasy Inverness cape was thrown back,
displaying evening dress. He carried a soft grey felt hat in one hand.
His whole aspect was seedy, disappointed, dejected; his face pale and
puffy, his sparse reddish hair and beard but indifferently trimmed. It
was borne in upon Iglesias, moreover, that the man was hungry, that he
had not--and that for some time--had enough to eat. Voluntary poverty is
among the most beautiful, involuntary poverty among the ugliest, sights
upon earth; and to which order of poverty that of de Courcy Smyth
belonged, Mr. Iglesias was in no doubt. This was a sordid sight, a sight
of discouragement, adding the last touch to the melancholy which
oppressed him. The seedy figure crossed the road, fumbled for a minute
with a latchkey. Then nerveless footsteps ascended the stairs, passed the
door, and took their joyless way up and onward to the bed-sitting-room
immediately above.

Down below the music had ceased, while sounds arose suggestive of a
little playfulness on the part of the two young men in bidding their
hostess and Miss Eliza Hart good-night. Very soon the house became
silent. But Dominic Iglesias, though tired, was in no humour for sleep.
He drew forward a leather-covered armchair and sat near the open window,
in at which came a breathing of night wind. This was soothing, touching
his forehead as with delicate pressure of a cool and sympathetic hand; so
that, without any sense of surprising transition, he found himself in the
garden of the little house in Holland Street, Kensington, once again. The
laburnum was in full blossom, and the breeze uplifted the light drooping
branches of it, making all their golden glory dance in the sunshine.
There must have been rain in the night, too, for the stone basin was full
of water, in which the sparrows were busy washing, sending up tiny
iridescent jets and fountains from their swiftly fluttering wings. It was
delicious to Dominic. He felt very safe, very gay. Only a heavy ill-
favoured tabby cat came from nowhere. It had designs upon the sparrows.
Twice it climbed stealthily up the broken bricks and gas clinkers. Twice
the little boy drove it away. It was not a nice cat. It had a broad white
face, deceitful little eyes, and grey whiskers. It declared it only
caught sparrows for their good and for the good of the community. It
assured Dominic he was guilty of a grave error of judgment in attempting
to interfere. It said a great deal about moral responsibility and the
heavy obligations persons of wealth and position owe to themselves.

Just then Pascal Pelletier, carrying a square Huntley Palmer's biscuit
tin, containing an infernal machine, under his arm, his angelic
countenance radiant in the sunshine, came down the steps from the dining-
room window. And, while Dominic ran to greet him, the cat crept back
again--its face was the face of Sir Abel Barking, and it made a spring at
the sparrows. But the pillar broke and the basin toppled over, pinning
it, across the loins, down on to the clinkers under the edge of the stone
lip.

"Oh! you've spoilt my garden, you've spoilt my garden!" Dominic cried.
"The basin has fallen. The sparrows will never wash in it any more."

But Pascal Pelletier patted him on the head tenderly.

"Do not weep over the fallen basin, very dear one," he said. "Rather sing
aloud Te Deum in praise of the glorious goddess of Social Revolution who
has delivered the enemy of the people into our hands. This is no affair
of cat and bird, but of the capitalist and the proletariat on which he
battens. So for a little space let the unholy creature lie there
writhing. Let it understand what it is to have a back broken by the
weight of an impossible burden. Let it try vainly to drag its limbs from
beneath an immovable load. Observe it, let it suffer. Very soon we will
finish with it, and explode the iniquitous system it represents. See, in
the name of humanity, of labour, of the unknown and unnumbered millions
of the martyred poor, I set a match to this good little fuse, and, with
the rapidity of thought, blow blasphemous tyrant Capital into a thousand
fragments of reeking flesh and splintered bone!"

But to the little boy, words and spectacle alike had become unendurably
painful.

"No, no, Pascal, you cannot cure everything that way. It is not just," he
cried. And running forward with all his strength he lifted the stone
basin off the wounded creature--cat, man, beast of prey, modern
financier, be it what it might. He stopped to gather it up in his arms,
and, repulsive though it was, to comfort and protect it. But just then
came a thunderous rattle and crash knocking him senseless.

Mr. Iglesias sat bolt upright in his chair, uncertain of his identity and
surroundings, shaken and bewildered.

Upstairs, de Courcy Smyth--spent and stupefied by the writing of a would-
be smart critique on the first-night performance of a screaming farce,
for one of to-morrow's evening papers--had stumbled, upsetting the fire-
irons, as he slouched across his room to bed. Iglesias heard the creak of
the wire-wove mattress as the man flung himself down; and that familiar
sound restored his sense of actualities. Yet all his mood was changed and
softened. The return to childhood had made a strange impression upon him,
filling him with a great nostalgia for things apparently lost, but
exquisite; and which, having once been, might, though he knew not by what
conceivable alchemy of time or chance, once again be. Meanwhile, he must
have slept long, for the wind had grown chill. The voice of London, the
monstrous mother, had grown weak and intermittent. And the earthly light,
pulsing along the horizon, had grown faint, humbled and chastened by the
whiteness of approaching dawn.




CHAPTER IV


A quarter-mile range of high unpainted oak paling, well seasoned, well
carpentered, innocent of chink or shrinkage, impervious to the human eye.
Visible above it the domed heads of enormous elm trees steeped in
sunshine, rising towards the ample curve of the summer sky. At intervals,
with tumultuous rush and scurry, the thud of the hoofs of unseen horses,
galloping for all they are worth over grass. The suck and rub of breeches
against saddle-flaps, the rattle of a curb chain or the rings of a bit.
A call, a challenge, smothered exclamations. The long-drawn swish of the
polo stick through the air, and the whack of the wooden head of it
against ball, or ground, or something unluckily softer and more sentient.
A pause, broken only by distant voices, and the sound, or rather sense,
of men and horses in quiet and friendly movement; followed by the
tumultuous rush and scurry, and all the moving incidents of the heard,
yet unwitnessed, drama over again.

For here it was that gallant and costly game beloved of Oriental
princes--rather baldly described to Mr. Iglesias yesterday by the driver of
the Hammersmith 'bus as a "kind of hockey on horseback"--in very full swing
no doubt. Only unfortunately Iglesias found himself on the wrong side of
the palings. And, since he had learned, indirectly, from the observations
of the monumental police-sergeant--directing the stream of carriages at
the entrance gates--to other would-be spectators, that to the polo
ground, as to so much else obviously desirable in this world, there is
"no admission except by ticket," on the wrong side of these same palings
he recognised he was fated to stay. It was a disappointment, not to say
an annoyance. For he had come forth, in accordance with his
determination, to make observations and inquiries regarding that same
matter of amusement. And, since the influence of that which is to be acts
upon us almost, if not quite, as strongly as the influence of that which
has been, the handsome, eager countenance of young Alaric Barking and the
graceful figure of his fair companion, as seen from the 'bustop, occurred
very forcibly in this connection to Dominic Iglesias' mind. He would go
forth and behold that which they had gone forth to behold. He would
witness the sports of the well-born and rich. From these he elected,
somewhat proudly, to take his first lessons in the fine art of amusement.
So here he was; and here, too--very much here--were the palings,
spelling failure and frustration of purpose.

Fortunately unwonted exercise and the pure invigorating atmosphere tended
to generate placidity, and agreeable harmony of the mental and physical
being. It followed that active annoyance was short-lived. For a minute or
two Mr. Iglesias loitered, listening to the moving music of the unseen
game. Then, walking onward to the end of the enclosure, where the palings
turn away sharply at the left, he crossed the road and made for a wooden
bench just there amiably presenting itself. It was pleasant to rest. The
walk had been a long one; but it now appeared to him that the labour of
it had not been wholly in vain. For around him stretched a breezy common,
broken by straggling bramble and furze brakes, and dotted with hawthorn
bushes, upon the topmost branches of which the crowded pinkish-white
blossoms still lingered. From one to another small birds flitted with a
pretty dipping flight, uttering quick detached notes as in merry question
and answer. Through the rough turf the bracken pushed upward, uncurling
sturdy croziers of brownish green. Away to the right, beyond the railway
line, rose the densely wooded slopes of Roehampton and Sheen; while,
against the purple-green gloom of them, the home signals of Barnes
Station--hard white lines and angles tipped with scarlet and black--stood
out in high relief like the gigantic characters of some strange alphabet.
Down the wide road motors ground and snorted; and carriages moved slowly,
two abreast, the menservants sitting at ease, talking and smoking while
waiting to take up at the police-guarded gate, back there towards the
heat and smoke of London, when the polo match should be played out.

But immediately London, the heat, and smoke, and raucous voice of it,
seemed far enough away, the wholesome charm of the country very present.
For a while Dominic Iglesias yielded himself up to it. Receptive,
quiescent, contented, he basked in the sunshine, his mind vacant of
definite thought. But for a while only. For as physical fatigue wore off,
definite thought returned; and with it the sense of his own loneliness,
the oppression of a future empty of work, the bitterness of this enhanced
by the little disappointment he had lately suffered. He leaned forward,
his hands clasped between his knees, looking at the bracken croziers
pushing bravely upward through the rough turf to air and light. Even
these blind and speechless things worked, in a sense, fulfilling the law
of their existence. He went back on the dream of last night, on his own
childhood, the happiness, yet haunting unspoken anxiety of it, his
father's fanaticism, fierce revolutionary propaganda, and mysteriously
uncertain fate.

"And to think that was the pit out of which I, of all men, was digged!"
he said to himself. "Have I done something to restore the family balance
in respect of right reason, or is the shame of incapacity upon me? Have I
sacrificed myself, or cowardly have I merely shirked living? Heaven
knows--I don't, only----"

But here his uncheerful meditations were broken in on by a voice,
imperative in tone, yet perceptibly shaken by laughter.

"Cappadocia!" it called. "Cappadocia! Do you hear? Come here, you little
reprobate."

Then Dominic Iglesias perceived that he had ceased to be sole occupant of
the bench. A dog, a tiny toy spaniel, sat beside him. It sidled very
close, gazing at him with foolishly prominent eyes. Its ears, black edged
with tan, soft and lustrous as floss silk, hung down in long lappets on
either side its minute and melancholy face. The tip of its red tongue
just showed. It was abnormally self-conscious and solemn. It planted one
fringed paw upon Iglesias' arm and it snored.

"Cappadocia!--well, of all the cheeky young beggars----"

This time the voice broke in unmistakable merriment, wholly spontaneous,
as of relief, even of mischievous triumph; and Mr. Iglesias, looking up,
found himself confronted by a young woman. She advanced slowly, her
trailing string-coloured lace skirts gathered up lazily in one hand.
About her shoulders she wore a long blue-purple silk scarf, embroidered
with dragons of peacock, and scarlet, and gold. These rather violent
colours found repetition in the nasturtium leaves and flowers that
crowned her lace hat, the wide brim of which was tied down with narrow
strings of purple velvet, gipsy fashion, beneath her chin. Under her arm
she carried another tiny spaniel, the creature's black morsel of a head
peeping out quaintly from among the forms of the embroidered dragons,
which last appeared to writhe, as in the heat of deadly conflict, as
their wearer moved. Her face was in shadow owing to the breadth of the
brim of her hat. Otherwise the sunshine embraced her whole figure,
conferring on it a glittering yet singularly unsubstantial effect, as
though a column of pale windswept dust were overlaid, here and there,
with splendour of rich enamel.

And it was just this effect of something unsubstantial, in a way
fictitious and out of relation to sober fact, which struck Dominic
Iglesias, robbing him for the moment of his dignified courtesy. Frankly
he stared at this appearance, so strangely at variance with the realities
of his own melancholy thought. Meanwhile the little dog snuggled up yet
closer against him.

"Yes--pray don't disturb yourself," the young lady went on volubly "It's
too bad, I know, to intrude on you like this. But as Cappadocia refuses
to come to me, it is clear I have to come after Cappadocia. It's simply
disgraceful the way she carries on when one takes her out, making
acquaintances like this, casually, all over the place. The maids flatly
refuse to air her, even on a string. They say it becomes a little too
compromising. But, as I explain to them, she's not a bit the modern
woman. She belongs to a stage of social development when pretty people
infinitely preferred being compromised to being squelched." The speaker
laughed again quietly. "I'm not altogether sure they weren't right. When
you are squelched, finished, done for, it matters precious little whether
you've been compromised first or not. Don't you agree? Any way,
Cappadocia's not going to be squelched if she can help it. She's horribly
scared, or pretends to be, at motors. Let one toot and she forgets all
her fine-lady manners, and just skips to anybody for protection. She'll
take refuge in the most unconventional places to escape."

The part of wisdom, in face of this very forthcoming young person, would
have been no doubt to arise and withdraw. But to Dominic Iglesias, just
then, dogs, woman, conversation, were alike so remote and unreal, part
merely of the scene which he had been contemplating, that he failed to
take them seriously. Divorced from routine, he was divorced, in a way,
from habitual modes of mind and conduct. He neither consented nor
refused, but just let things happen, attaching little or no meaning to
them. If this feminine being chose to prattle--well, let her do so.
Really he did not care.

"I am not very modern myself," he said, with a shade of weariness. "So
perhaps your small dog had some intuition of a kindred spirit when taking
refuge with me."

"All the same, you hardly date from the social era of Charles II., I
fancy," the young lady answered quickly.

As she spoke she raised her chin with a slightly impudent movement, thus
bringing her countenance into the sunlight. For the first time Iglesias
clearly saw her face. It was small, the features insignificant, the skin
smooth and fine in texture, but sallow. Her hair, black and very massive,
was puffed out and dressed low, hiding her ears. Her lips were rather
positively red, and the tinge of colour on either cheek, though slight,
was not wholly convincing in tone. Even to a person of Mr. Iglesias'
praiseworthy limitation of experience in such matters, her face was
vaguely suggestive of the footlights--would have been distinctly so but
for her eyes. These were curiously at variance with the rest of her
appearance. They belonged to a quite other order of woman, so to speak--a
woman of finer physique, of higher intelligence, possibly of nobler
purposes. They were arrestingly large in size, thereby helping to dwarf
the proportions of her face. In colour they were a rather light warm
hazel, with a slight film over both iris and pupil, and a noticeably
bluish shade in the whites of them. In these last particulars they were
like a baby's eyes; but very unlike in the reflective intensity of their
observation as she fixed them upon Dominic Iglesias.

"Cappadocia may be a fool about motors," she remarked, "but she's
uncommonly shrewd in reading character. She seems to like you, to have
taken you on, don't you know; and she's generally right. So I'll sit
down, please. Oh! no, no, come along now"--this as Mr. Iglesias rose and
made a movement to depart--"why, dear man, the very point of the whole
show is that you should sit down, too."




CHAPTER V


And so it came about that the Lady of the Windswept Dust sat at one end
of the flat bench and Dominic Iglesias at the other, with the two absurd
and exquisite little dogs in between. And the lady chattered. Her voice
was sweet and full, with plaintive tones and turns of laughter in it;
and, though the vowel sounds were not wholly impeccable, having the tang
in them common to the speech of the cockney bred, the aspirates happily
remained inviolate. And Iglesias listened, still with a curious
indifference, as, sitting in the body of the house, he might have
listened to patter from the other side of the footlights. It passed the
time. Presently he would get up, taking the whole of his rather sorrowful
personality along with him, and go out by the main entrance, while she
left by the stage door--and so vanished, little dogs and all.

"It's my habit to play fair," she announced. "If I'm going to ask
personal questions at the finish, I always lead up to them by supplying
personal information at the start. It's mean to induce other people to
give themselves away unless you give yourself away first--also, I observe
it is usually quite unsuccessful. Well, then, to begin with, his name"--
she gently poked the tiny spaniel beside her, causing it to wriggle
uneasily all the length of its satiny back--"is Onions. Graceful and
distinguished, isn't it? But I give you my word I couldn't help myself.
Cappadocia's so duchessy that I had to knock the conceit out of her
somehow, or it would not have been possible to live with her. She was
altogether too smart for me--used to look at me as if I was a cockroach.
So I consulted a friend of mine about it; for it's a little too much to
be made to feel like a black-beetle in your own house, and by a thing of
that size, too! And he--my friend--said there is nothing to compare with
a _mesalliance_ for taking the stuffing out of anyone. I own I was not
exactly off my head about that speech of his. In a way it was rather a
facer; but when I got cool I saw he was right. After all, he knew, and I
knew--and he knew that I knew----"

The lady paused. Her voice had taken on a plaintive inflection. She
looked away at the domed heads of the enormous elm trees above the range
of oak palings.

"For the life of me I can't imagine why you're here," she exclaimed,
"instead of inside there with all the rest of them! However, we haven't
got as far as that yet. I was telling you about my King Charleses. So my
friend brought me this one"--again she poked the little dog gently. "His
pedigree's pretty fair, but of course it's not a patch on Cappadocia's.
Her prizes and the puppies--you don't mind my alluding quite briefly to
the puppies--are a serious source of income to me. But I believe she
would have ignored the defective pedigree. He is rather nice-looking, you
see, and Cappadocia is rather superficial. It is the name that worries
her--Onions, Willie Onions, that's where the real trouble comes in. Not
like it? I believe you. She's capable of saving up all her pocket-money
to buy him a foreign title, as a rich, ugly woman I once knew did who
married a man called Spittles. He was a bad lot when she married him, and
he stayed so. But as the Comte d'Oppitale it didn't matter. Vices became
merely quaint little eccentricities. If he beat her it was with an
umbrella with a coronet on the handle, and that made all the difference.
Everything for the shop window, you see, with a nature like hers or
Cappadocia's. But I don't rub it in, I assure you I don't. I only remind
Cappadocia of the fact by calling her Mrs. W. O. when she's a pest and a
terror. And that's better than smacking her, anyhow, isn't it?"

To this proposition Mr. Iglesias gravely assented. The lady drew her
blue-purple scarf a little closer about her shoulders, causing the
embroidered dragons to writhe as in the heat of conflict, while the
sunlight glinted on the gold thread of their crests and claws, and
glittered in their jewelled eyes. She gazed at the elm trees again.

"It's quite nice to hear you speak, you know," she remarked
parenthetically. "The conversation has been a little one-sided so far. I
was beginning to be afraid you might be bored. But now it's all right. I
flourish on encouragement! So, to go on, my name is Poppy--Poppy St.
John--Mrs. St. John. Rather good, isn't it?"

"Distinctly so," said Mr. Iglesias. Her unblushing effrontery began to
entertain him somewhat. And then he had sallied forth in search of
amusement. This was not the form of amusement he would have selected;
but--since it presented itself?

"I'm glad you like it," she returned. "I've always thought it rather
telling myself--an improvement on Mrs. Willie Onions, anyhow. Oh! yes, a
vast improvement," she repeated. "My friend was quite right. I tell you
it's an awful handicap to have a name which gives you away socially. The
man, the husband, I mean, may be the best of the good. Still, it's
difficult to forgive him for labelling you with some stupidity like that.
There's no getting away from it. You feel like a bottle of pickles, or
boot-polish, or a tin of insecticide whenever a servant announces you.
Everybody knows where you do--and don't--come in. But, to go on, I am
barely three--only I fancy you are the sort of person who is rather rough
on lying, aren't you? Well, in that case, quite between ourselves--I am
just turned nine-and-twenty."

She faced round on Dominic Iglesias, fixing on him those curiously
arresting eyes, which at once emphasised and redeemed the commonness of
her face, as the sweetness of her voice emphasised and redeemed the
commonness of her accent, and the quietude of her manner and movements
mitigated the impertinence of her words and vulgarity of her diction.

"And really that's about all it is necessary for you to know at present,"
she asserted. "We shall see later, if we keep it up--if Cappadocia keeps
it up, I mean, of course. She is fearfully gone on you now, that's clear;
and she may be capable of a serious attachment. I can't tell. An
unfortunate marriage has been known to turn that way before now. Anyhow,
we'll give her the benefit of the doubt."

Poppy laughed softly, leaning forward and still looking at Mr. Iglesias
from under the shadow of her wide-brimmed hat.

"Now," she said, "come along. I've shown you I play fair all round, even
to a stuck-up little monkey of a thing like Cappadocia. It's your turn to
stand and deliver. I had been watching you and speculating for ever so
long before our introduction. Tell me, who on earth are you?"

Iglesias' figure stiffened a little; but it was impossible to be annoyed
with her. To begin with, she was too unreal, too unsubstantial a being.
And, to go on with, invincible good-temper is so very disarming.

"Who am I? Nobody," he answered gravely.

"Bless us, here's a find!" Poppy cried, apparently addressing the little
dogs. "Hasn't he so much of a name even as Willie Onions? Where's it gone
to? It must be nearly as awkward for him as it was for the man who had no
shadow. Come, though," she added in tones of remonstrance, "you must play
fair. Cards on the table and no humbugging. To put it another way, what
do you do?"

"Since yesterday, nothing," he answered.

The young lady regarded him with increasing interest.

"But, my gentle lunatic," she said, "you didn't exactly begin your
acquaintance with this planetary sphere yesterday--couldn't, you know,
though you are very beautiful to look at. So, if you don't very
particularly much mind, we'll hark back to before yesterday."

Dominic Iglesias' gravity gave way slightly. He smiled in spite of his
natural pride and reticence.

"For over thirty-five years I was a clerk in a city bank."

"Pshaw!" Poppy cried hotly. "And pray what variety of congenital idiot do
you take me for? If you are going to decline upon fiction, please let it
be of a higher order than that. I tell you it's unworthy of you!"

She pursed up her lips and moved her head slowly from side to side in
high disgust.

"Don't be childish," she said. "Don't be transparently silly. If you want
to gas, do put a little more intelligence into it. You--you--out of sight
the most distinguished-looking man I've ever met except Lord--well, we
won't name names, it sounds showy--you a clerk in a city bank! There,
excuse me, but simply--" Poppy snapped her fingers like a pair of
castanets, making the little dogs start and whimper. "Fiddle!" she cried;
"tell it to a bed-ridden spinster in a blind asylum!--Fiddle-de-dee!"

And for the life of him Dominic Iglesias could not help laughing. It was
a new sensation. It occurred to him that he had not laughed for years--
hardly since the days of poor Pascal Pelletier and the little garden in
Holland Street, Kensington.

Poppy watched him, her eyes dancing. Her expression was very charming,
wholly unselfconscious, in a way maternal, just then. But Iglesias was
hardly sensible of it.

"That's good," she said. "Now you'll feel a lot better. I saw there was
something wrong with you from the start which needed breaking up. Now,
suppose you quit inadequate inventions and just tell the truth."

"Unfortunately, I have done so already," Mr. Iglesias said.

The lady paused a moment, her face full of inquiry and doubt.

"Honest injun?"

The term was not familiar to her hearer, but he judged it to be of the
nature of an asseveration, and assented.

"And do you mean to tell me that for all those years you went through
that drudgery every day?"

"I had my Sundays," Iglesias answered; "and, since their invention, my
bank holidays. Latterly I got three weeks' holiday in the summer,
formerly a fortnight."

Laughter had speedily evaporated; and, his harsher mood returning upon
him, Iglesias found a certain bitter enjoyment in setting forth the
extreme meagreness of his life before this light-hearted, unsubstantial
piece of womanhood. Again he classed her with the absurd and exquisite
little dogs as something superfluous, out of relation to sad and sober
realities.

"And yet you manage to look as you do! It beats me," Poppy declared. "I
tell you it knocks me out of time completely. For, if you'll excuse my
being personal, there is an air about you not usually generated by an
office stool--at least, in my experience. Where do you get it from? You
can't be English?"

"I am a Spaniard by extraction," Mr. Iglesias said, with a slight lift of
the head.

"There now, my dear man, don't you go and freeze up again. We were just
beginning to get along so nicely," Poppy put in quickly. "I am having a
capital good time, and you're not having an altogether bad one, are you?
But, tell me, how long ago were you extracted?"

"Very long ago. I was brought to England as a baby child."

"Oh! I didn't mean it that way," she returned. "I was not touching on the
unpardonable subject of age; not that it would matter much in your case,
for you are one of the lucky sort with whom age does not count. I only
meant are you an all-round foreigner?"

"Practically--my mother was partly Irish."

Dominic Iglesias looked away to those densely wooded slopes of Sheen and
Roehampton, against the purple-green gloom of which the home signals of
Barnes Station--hard white lines and angles tipped with scarlet and
black--stood out like the gigantic characters of some strange alphabet.
The air was sweet with the scent of new-mown hay. The birds flirted up
and down the hawthorn bushes and furze brakes. It was all very charming;
yet that same emptiness and distrust of the future were very present to
Iglesias. He forgot all about his companion, aware only that those two
unbidden guests, Old Age and Loneliness, stood close beside him, claiming
harbourage and entertainment.

"Ah! your mother," Poppy said slowly, with the slightest perceptible
inflection of mockery. "And she is alive still?"

Dominic Iglesias turned upon the poor Lady of the Windswept Dust
fiercely. She had come too close, come from her proper place--were not
her lips painted?--behind the footlights, and laid her hands upon that
which was holy. He was filled with unreasoning anger towards her--anger
towards himself, too, that he should have departed from his habitual
silence and reticence, submitted to be cross-questioned, and listened to
her feather-headed patter so long. He rose to his feet, for the moment
young, alert, full of a pride at once militant and protective.

"God forbid!" he said sternly. "Dear saint and martyr, she is safe from
all misreading at last. She is dead."

He stood a moment trying to choke down his anger before addressing her
again.

"It is time I should go," he said presently. "I think we have talked
enough."

But Poppy St. John presented a singular appearance. All the audacity had
departed from her. She sat huddled together, looking very small and
desolate; her eyes--the one noble feature of her face--swimming with
tears.

"No, no; don't go," she cried in tones of childlike entreaty. "Why should
you go? I like you, and I meant no harm. I've had the beastliest day, and
meeting you was a let-up. You did me good somehow. Cappadocia was quite
right in taking to you. I only wanted to know about you because--well,
you are different. Pshaw, don't tell me. I know what I am talking about.
You're straight. You're good right through."

The words were poured forth so rapidly that Iglesias hardly gathered the
exact purport of them. But one thing was clear to him--namely, that this
frivolous and meretricious being must be human after all, since she could
suffer.

"Don't go," she repeated. "I'm miserable. I'll explain. I'll tell you.
Just sit down again. It would be awfully kind. You see, I've been
expecting a friend. It was all-important I should see him to-day, because
there were things to be said. I've been awake half the night screwing up
my courage to saying them. And then he never turned up. I got nerves
waiting hour after hour--anybody would, waiting like that. And I began to
imagine every kind of pestilent disaster."

Poppy swallowed a little and dabbed her pocket-handkerchief against her
eyes.

"I shall be all right in a minute," she went on. "Do sit down, please.
You say you're nobody and have nothing to do, so you can't very well be
in a hurry. I am like this sometimes. It's awfully silly, but I can't
help it. Some rotten trifle sets me off, and then I can't stop myself. I
begin to go over all my worst luck.--Doesn't it occur to you there's no
earthly good in standing? It obliges me to talk loud, and it's stupid to
take all Barnes Common into our confidence. Thanks; that's very nice of
you.--Well, you see when I'm like his, the flood-gates of memory are
opened--which sounds pretty enough, but the prettiness is strictly
limited to the sound for most of us, at least as far as my experience
goes. The water is generally a bit dirty, and there are too many dead
things floating about in it; and, when they reel by, as the current takes
them, they turn and seem to struggle and come half alive."

She paused, hitching the embroidered dragons up about her shoulders.

"That is why I put on this scarf to-day. It was given me by a man who was
awfully fond of me before--I married. He bought it in the bazaar at
Peshawur, and sent it home to me just as he was starting on one of those
little frontier wars the accounts of which they keep out of the English
papers. And he was killed, poor dear old boy, in some footy little
skirmish. And this is all I've got left of him."

Poppy spread out the ends of the scarf for Mr. Iglesias' inspection.

"It must have cost a lot of money. The stones are real, you see; and that
gold thread is tremendously heavy. Just feel the weight. It was all his
people's doing. They didn't consider me smart enough for him--or rather
for themselves. They weren't anybody in particular, but they were
climbing. The society microbe had bitten them badly. So they bundled him
off to India. What another pair of shoes it would have been for me if
he'd lived! At least it seems so to me when I'm down on my luck, as I am
to-day. But after all, I don't know." Poppy began to be impudent, to
laugh again, though somewhat brokenly. "Sometimes I don't believe one can
count on any of you men till you are well dead, and then you're not much
use, you know, faithful or unfaithful."

She dabbed her eyes once more and looked at Mr. Iglesias, smiling
ruefully.

"Life's a pretty rotten business, at times, all round, isn't it?" she
said. "You must have found it so with that thirty years' drudgery in a
city bank. By the way, what bank was it?"

And Dominic Iglesias, touched by that very human story, attracted, in
spite of himself, by the frankness of his companion, a little shaken by
the novelty of the whole situation, answered mechanically:

"The bank? Oh, yes! Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking of Threadneedle
Street."

For a moment Poppy sat silent, her mouth round as an O. Then she drew her
open hand down sharply behind poor Willie Onions, and shot the small dog,
in a sitting position, off the bench on to the rough grass. His fringed
legs stuck out stiff as sticks, while his enormous lappets of ears flew
up and back, giving him the most wildly demented appearance during this
brief inglorious flight through space.

"Catch birds!" she cried, "catch birds, I tell you! Think of your figure.
My good child, take exercise or you'll be as round as a tub!"

She clapped her hands encouragingly, but the little animal, half-scared,
half-offended, came closer, fawning upon her trailing string-coloured
skirts. Poppy leaned down, resting her elbows upon her knees, and napped
at the unhappy Onions with her handkerchief.

"Go away, you silly billy. Have a little decent pride, can't you? Don't
bestow attentions when they're unwelcome." Then she addressed herself to
Mr. Iglesias, but without looking up. "I beg your pardon, all this must
seem rather abrupt. But sometimes one's duty to one's family takes one on
the jump, as you may say; and one repairs neglect right away also on the
jump. But--but--there's one thing I should like to know--when I told you
my name just now--Poppy St. John, Mrs. St. John--you remember?"

"I remember," he said.

"Well, didn't it convey--didn't it mean anything special to you?"

"I am afraid not," Iglesias answered. "You must pardon my ignorance,
since I have lived very much out of the world. I know nothing of
society."

"So much the better. The world is a vastly overrated place, and society
is about the biggest fraud going." She left off teasing the little dog,
sat bolt upright, and looked full at Dominic Iglesias, her eyes serious,
redeeming all the insignificance of her features and those little
doubtful details of the general effect of her. "Don't make any mistake
about either of them," she said. "Let the world and society alone as you
value your peace of mind and independence. They're dead sea fruit to all
outsiders such as--well--you and me. I hate them; only they've got me,
and will have me in some form or other till the end, I suppose. But you
are different, and I warn you"--Poppy's voice took on an odd inflection
of mingled bitterness and tenderness--"they are not a bit adapted for a
beautiful, innocent, uncrowned king like you."

She got up as she spoke, gathering her trailing skirts about her, and
called sharply to the little dogs.

"The dew is rising," she said, "and Cappadocia's a regular cry-baby if
she gets her feet wet. I must take her home. There's my card. You see the
address? You can come when you like, only let me know the day beforehand,
because I should be sorry to have people with me or to be out. Cappadocia
'll want you. So shall I. You do me good. I'll play quite fair, I promise
you. Good-night."

The sun stood in a triumph of crimson and gold, which passed into the
fine blue of a belt of earth mist. Eastward the sky blushed, too, but
with brazen blushes, tarnished by the breath of the great city--the pure
blue of the earth mist exchanged for the murk of coal smoke and the
thousand and one exhalations of steaming streets, public-houses and
restaurants. Poppy St. John walked slowly along the footpath, her figure
dyed by the effulgence of the skies to the crimson and gold of her name.
About her shoulders the embroidered dragons glittered as she moved, while
the two tiny spaniels trotted humbly at her heels. For a brief space she
showed absolutely resplendent. Then suddenly an interposing terrace of
smart much-be-balconied and beflowered little houses shut off the sunset;
and in their rather vulgar shadow Dominic Iglesias, watching, beheld her
transformed into the unsubstantial, in a way fictitious, Lady of the
Windswept Dust and of the footlights once again.




CHAPTER VI


That weekly ceremony--well known to Trimmer's Green--Mrs. Lovegrove's
afternoon at-home, was in progress. She wore her black satin gown, and
her white Maltese lace fichu, just to give it a touch of summer
lightness. It must be added that she was warm and uncomfortable, having
conscientiously superintended preparations in respect of commissariat in
the overheated atmosphere of the basement; hurried upstairs--the imagined
tinkle of the front-door bell perpetually in her ears--to pull her stays
in at the waist and project herself into the aforementioned official
garments--a very trying process on a June day to a person of ample
contours and what may be described as the fluidic temperament. Later she
had cooled off, or tried so to cool--for on such occasions there is
invariably some window-blind, ornament, or piece of furniture actively in
need of straightening--sitting in her somewhat fog-stained and sun-faded
drawing-room during that evil period of waiting in which the intending
hostess first suffers acute mortification because she is "quite sure
nobody will come," and then gets hot all over from the equally agitating
certainty that everybody she has ever known will appear simultaneously,
and that there will be neither cakes nor conversation enough to go round.

But this disquieting and oft-repeated preface to the afternoon's
festivity was now happily over. And the good lady, oblivious of
discomfort and a slightly disorganised complexion, sat purring with
satisfaction upon her best Chesterfield sofa, Dr. Giles Nevington beside
her. "Pleasure, not business, to-day, Mrs. Lovegrove. For once I am going
to make no demands on my faithful and able coadjutor. This call is a
purely friendly one--no subscription lists of any sort or description in
my pocket," the clergyman had said in his resonant bass when clasping her
hand.--A large, dark, clean-shaven man of forty, a studied effect of
geniality and benevolence about him, slightly tempered, perhaps, by cold
and watchful blue-grey eyes, fixed--so said his detractors--with
unswerving determination upon the shovel-hat, apron, and gaiters of the
Anglican episcopate.

Rhoda Lovegrove, however, was very far from being among the detractors.
She relished this gracious speech enormously. She also approved the
attitude of her husband at this juncture; since, with praiseworthy tact,
he engaged the attention of her two other guests, a Mrs. Ballard and her
daughter. These ladies were rich, the younger had pretensions both to
beauty and fashion; but their present was, alas! stained by
Noncomformity, their past contaminated by association with retail trade.
At the entrance of the vicar, remembering these sad defects, George
Lovegrove rose to the occasion. Gently, but firmly, he pranced round them
heading them towards the doorway.

"Who are those?" Dr. Nevington inquired, with some interest. "Not
parishioners, I fancy."

"Not in any true sense," Mrs. Lovegrove replied. "Dissenters, and I am
sorry to say rather spiteful against the Church."

The clergyman leaned back and crossed his legs comfortably.

"Ah! well, poor human nature! A touch of jealousy perhaps," he remarked.

Mrs. Lovegrove beamed.

"Very likely--still I should be just as well pleased not to continue
their acquaintance. I don't like to hear things that are disrespectful. I
should have ceased to call, but relatives of theirs are old friends of
Mr. Lovegrove's mother's family."

"Quite so, quite so," the other returned. Even when silent the sound of
him seemed to encompass him, as the roll of a drum seems to salute you
when merely beholding that instrument. His speech filled all the room,
flowing forth into every corner, sweeping upward in waves to the very
cornice. The feminine members of his congregation found this most
beautiful; having, indeed, been known to declare that did he preach in
Chinese, they would still receive edification and spiritual benefit.--
"Quite so," he repeated, "the breaking of old family ties is certainly to
be avoided. And then, moreover, we should always guard against any
appearance of harshness or illiberality in dealing with Christians from
whom we have reason to differ in minor questions of doctrine or practice.
We must never forget that the Nonconformists, though they went out from
us, do remain the brethren of all right-minded Churchmen in a very
special sense, since they have the great lessons of the Reformation at
heart. I could wish that certain parties within the Church were animated
by the same manly and intelligent intolerance of idolatry and
superstition as the majority of the dissenters whom I meet. Personally I
should welcome greater freedom of intercourse, and a frequent interchange
of pulpits."

"We know who'd be the gainers," Mrs. Lovegrove put in gracefully.

"Ah! well, I am prepared to believe that the gain might not be
exclusively on one side."

Mrs. Lovegrove folded her fat hands, purring almost audibly. He seemed to
her so very wise and good.

"That's so like you, Dr. Nevington," she said. "As I always tell Mr.
Lovegrove, we have a great responsibility in having you for our pastor
and friend. You are a standing rebuke to many of us, being so wide-minded
yourself."

"Hardly that, hardly that," he answered with becoming modesty. "In my
humble way I do strive towards unity, that is all. Even towards the
Church of Rome I would extend a friendly and helpful hand. We cannot, of
course, go to her, yet she should never be discouraged from coming to
us.--But here is your good husband back again--ceased to be unevenly
yoked with the unbeliever, eh, Lovegrove?"

"I was glad you took them away, Georgie," Mrs. Lovegrove put in. "Still
I'm sorry for you, for the vicar's been talking so nobly. You've missed
such a lot."

"Ah, hardly that. I have merely been giving your dear good wife a little
lecture on Christian charity. How is Mrs. Nevington? Thank you,
wonderfull well, earnest and energetic as ever. I do not know how I could
meet the demands of this large parish without her."

"A true helpmeet," purred Mrs. Lovegrove.

"Truly so--and specially in all questions of organisation. She is
altogether my superior in administrative capacity. Indeed, it is an
understood thing between us that I relieve her of what may be called the
bad third of her marriage vow. If she will love and honour, I assure her
I am ready to obey. A capital working rule for husbands--eh, Lovegrove?--
always supposing they have found the right woman, as you and I have."

In the midst of this delicious badinage the hostess had to rise to
receive further guests. Conflicting emotions struggled within her ample
bosom--namely, regret at leaving that thrice happy sofa, and
satisfaction that others should behold the glory thereon so visibly
enthroned.

"How d'ye do, Mrs. Porcher? How d'ye do, Miss Hart?" she said. "Very kind
of you to come and call. Only a few friends as yet, but perhaps that's
just as pleasant this warm afternoon. Dr. Nevington, as you see, and at
his very best"--she lowered her voice discreetly. "So at home, so full
of great thoughts, and yet so comical--quite a privilege for all to hear
him talk."

Encouraged by recent commendation, George Lovegrove again rose with
praiseworthy tact to the occasion. It may be stated in passing that, in
person, he was below the middle height, a thick oblong man, his figure,
indeed, not unsuggestive of a large carapace, from the four corners of
which sprouted short arms and legs. His face was round, fresh-coloured,
and clean to the point of polish. His yellowish grey hair, well flattened
and shining, grew far back on his forehead. And this, combined with small
blue eyes, clear as a child's, a slight inward squint to them, produced
an effect of permanent and innocent surprise not devoid of pathos. In
character he was guileless and humble-minded. The spectacle of cruelty or
injustice would, however, rouse him to the belligerent attitude of the
proverbial _brebis enrage_. He believed himself to be very happy--an
added touch of pathos perhaps--and was pained and surprised if it was
brought home to him that others found life a less comfortable and kindly
invention than he himself did. Hence reports of suicides worried him
sadly. He would always have returned a verdict of temporary insanity,
this being to him the only explanation conceivable of a voluntary exit
from our so excellent present form of existence. Yet George Lovegrove was
not without his little secret sorrow--who indeed is? A deep-seated regret
for nonexistent small Lovegroves possessed him, the instinct of paternity
being strong in him. He loved children, and, when alone, often lingered
beside perambulators in Kensington Gardens fondly observing their
contents. Yet not for ten thousand pounds sterling would he have admitted
this weakness, lest in doing so he should hurt "the wife's feelings." And
it was in obedience to consideration for the said feelings that he now
threw himself gallantly into the breach. For, after acting as
appreciative chorus to an interlude of sonorous trifling on the part of
the clergyman with the newcomers, he adroitly--under promise of showing
her recent additions to his collection of picture postcards--detached
Miss Eliza Hart from the neighbourhood of the sofa and conveyed her to
the farther side of the room. Mrs. Porcher, neat, pensive, and
sentimental, could be trusted to play the part of attentive listener; but
the great Eliza, as he knew by experience, was liable to develop
dangerous energy, to get a little above herself, shake her leonine mane
of upstanding sandy hair, and become altogether too talkative, not to say
loud, for such distinguished company. Personally he had a soft spot in
his heart for Eliza. But, if she put herself forward, he feared for "the
wife's feelings," therefore did he skilfully detach her.

And he had reason to congratulate himself on this manoeuvre, for Eliza
undoubtedly was in a frolicsome humour.

"Yes," she remarked, contemplating the portrait of a celebrated actress.
"That is very taking and stylish; and it is just what I should like to
have done with my Peachie." This graceful _sobriquet_ was generally
understood to bear testimony to the excellence of Mrs. Porcher's
complexion. "Now, if we wanted a gentleman guest or two more at any time,
a picture postcard of her like this, just slightly tinted, in answer to
inquiries?"

Miss Hart, her head on one side, looked playfully at Mr. Lovegrove.

"What about a subsequent summons for over-crowding?" he chuckled. The
whole breadth of the room, well understood, was between him and the
wife's feelings, not to mention the august presence beside her upon the
sofa.

"No doubt that has to be thought of!" Eliza nodded sagely. "But is she
not looking sweeter than ever to-day? Do not pretend you have not noticed
it, Mr. Lovegrove. There's no deceiving me! I know you."

Like all mild and moral men, Lovegrove flushed with delight at any
suggestion that he was a gay dog, a dashing blade. His good, honest face
took on a higher polish than ever.

"You are too clever by half, Miss Hart."

"Well, somebody has to keep their wits about them, with such a love as
Peachie to care for. I dressed her myself to-day. 'The pearl-grey gown if
you like,' I said, 'but not a scrap of black with it. Just a touch of
colour at the throat, please.' 'No, dear Liz,' she said, 'it would call
for remark, since I have never done so since I lost Major Porcher.' But
there, Mr. Lovegrove, I insisted. For why she should go on wearing
complimentary mourning all her life for a wretch that nearly broke her
heart and ruined her, passes me. 'Forget the serpent,' I said, 'and put
on a little turquoise tulle pompom.' Now just look at her!"

"Rather dangerous for some people, is it not?" Lovegrove inquired quite
slyly.

"Hard on our gentlemen, you mean? Well, perhaps it is. But then they
always have the sight of me to put up with.--No compliments, thank you. I
have my eyesight and my toilet-glass, and they have let me know I was no
Venus ever since I can remember. It would not do to depress our gentlemen
too much. They might leave, and then wherever would Cedar Lodge be?"

Miss Hart became suddenly serious and confidential. "And that reminds me,"
she went on. "I wanted to have a private word with you to-day about a
certain gentleman."

"Who may be?" the good George inquired.

"You can guess, can't you? Your own candidate."

"Mr. Iglesias?"

The lady nodded.

"Peachie must be spared anxiety, therefore I speak, Mr. Lovegrove.
Something is going on, and she is getting worried. You cannot approach
the person to whom we are alluding as you can either of our others.
Rather stand-offish, even now after nearly eight years that he has been
with us. Between you and me and the bedpost, Mr. Lovegrove, I am just a
wee bit nervous of that person. So if you could hint, quite in
confidence, what his plans may be for the future it would' be really
friendly."

"Dear me, dear me! Plans? I do not quite follow you, Miss Hart. Nothing
wrong with him, I trust?"

"That is just what we cannot find out. No spying, of course, Mr.
Lovegrove. Neither Peachie nor I would descend to such meanness. Our
gentlemen have perfect liberty. We would scorn to put questions. But it
is close on a week now since the person we are alluding to has been to
the City."

"Bless me! You surprise me. He cannot have left Barking Brothers &
Barking?"

The great Eliza shook her leonine mane.

"I believe that is just exactly what he has done."

"You do surprise me. I can hardly credit it. Nearly a week, and he as
punctual and regular as clockwork! I must run over this evening and catch
him. Something must be wrong. And yet why has he not been here? Dear me.
Miss Hart, you----"

But the end of the sentence was lost in the bass notes issuing from the
presence upon the sofa.

"Truly, the prosperity of the nation," Dr. Nevington was saying, "of this
dear old England of ours that we so love, is wholly bound up with the
prosperity of her national Church. I use the word prosperity in a plain,
manly, straightforward sense. Personally I should rejoice to see the
bonds of Church and State drawn closer. It could not fail to make for the
welfare of both. Then, among other benefits, we should see the poverty of
many members of my cloth, which is now a crying scandal--"

"You do hear very sad tales from the country districts, certainly,"
sighed Mrs. Lovegrove.

"The state of affairs is more than sad, it is iniquitous. And therefore
the Church must assert herself. The individual minister must assert
himself, and claim a higher scale of remuneration. Help yourself, show
push and principle, cultivate practical aims--that is what I preach to
young men reading for Holy Orders. We have no place in these days for
visionaries and dreamers. We want men who march with the times, who are
interested in politics, and can make themselves felt."

So did the great voice roll on and outward. Very beautiful to the
listeners in sound--though, in sense, it may be questioned whether it
conveyed very definite ideas to them--but highly embarrassing to the
house-parlourmaid, whose feminine tones quite failed to make headway
against the volume of it. With the consequence that Dominic Iglesias was
left standing in the shadow of the doorway unheeded.

He was aware, and that not without surprise, how much these few days of
freedom and leisure had quickened his perceptions. His mental attitude
had changed. His demand had ceased to be moderate. Hence he suffered a
hundred offences to taste and sensibility hitherto unknown, or at least
unregistered. He knew when a woman was plain, when a conversation was
vapid or vulgar, a manner pretentious, a speech lacking in sincerity.
Consciously he stood aside, no longer out of humility or indifference,
but critically observant, challenging things however familiar, and
passing judgment upon them. For example, the unlovely character of Mrs.
Lovegrove's drawing-room engrossed his attention--the dirty-browns and
tentative watery blues of it, the multiplicity of flimsy, worthless,
little ornaments revealing a most lamentable absence of artistic
perception. In that fine booming clerical voice he detected a kindred
absence of delicate perception, a showiness born of very inadequate
conception of relative values. Indeed, the voice and the sentiments given
forth by it, in as far as he caught the drift of them, raised a definite
spirit of antagonism in him. The voice seemed to trample. Dominic
Iglesias was taken with an inclination--very novel in him--to trample,
too. He crossed the room, an added touch of gravity and dignity in his
aspect and manner.

The clergyman gazed at him with some curiosity, while Mrs. Lovegrove
surged up off the sofa.

"Mr. Iglesias! Well, of all people! Whoever would have expected to see
you at this early hour of the day?"

"Talk of a certain gentleman and that gentleman appears," Miss Eliza Hart
whispered. Then wagging her finger at her host, "Now don't you forget
that little question of mine. Find out his intentions, just, as you may
say, under the rose. But there's Peachie signalling to go."

In the ensuing interval of farewells, which were slightly protracted
owing to friskiness on the part of the fair Eliza, Iglesias found himself
standing beside the clergyman. The latter still regarded him with
curiosity. But, whatever his faults, not his worst enemy could accuse Dr.
Nevington of being a respecter of persons unless he was well assured
beforehand whom such persons might be. He therefore turned to Iglesias
with the easy air of patronage not uncommon to his cloth, as one who
should say: "My good sir, don't be afraid. I am a man of the world as
well as a Christian. I will handle you gently. I won't hurt you."

"I think I caught a foreign name," he remarked. "You are paying a visit
to London? I hope our capital makes an agreeable impression upon you."

"The visit has been of such long duration," Iglesias answered, "that
impressions have, I am afraid, become slightly blurred by usage."

"Ah! indeed--no doubt that happens in some measure to all of us. I am to
understand that you are a resident?"

Iglesias assented.

"In this district?"

Again he assented.

"Indeed. Really, I wish I had known it sooner. It always gives me
pleasure to meet persons of another nationality than my own. Intercourse
with them makes for liberality of view. It often dispels anti-English
prejudice. I am always glad to be helpful to strangers."

"You are very kind," Iglesias said with gravity.

"Not at all--not at all. I hold very practical views not only regarding
the duties of the Englishman to the alien, but of the pastor towards his
flock. But I find it almost impossible, I regret to say, to become
personally acquainted with all my parishioners. My curates are capital
young fellows--earnest, active, go-ahead. But in a large area such as
this there is always a shifting population with which the clergy, however
energetic, find it difficult to keep in touch. We are obliged to
discriminate between dwellers and sojourners. As soon as any person is
proved to be a _bona fide_ dweller my curates pass his or her name on to
me, and either I or my wife call in due course."

Dominic Iglesias permitted himself to smile.

"An excellent system, no doubt," he remarked.

"I find it works very well on the whole. But no system is infallible.
There must be occasional oversights, and you have been the victim of one.
I mention this to disabuse your mind of the idea of any intentional
neglect. Well, Mrs. Lovegrove, and so our good friends Mrs. Porcher and
Miss Hart have gone--estimable women both of them in their own line. I
ought to be running away, too, and I have just been having a word with
your other guest here, Mr.----"

"Iglesias," Dominic put in coldly. He was in a state of pretty high
displeasure. To hear his name mispronounced might, he felt, precipitate a
catastrophe.

"Iglesias?--ah! yes, thank you--I have been explaining to Mr. Iglesias
our system of parochial visiting and quoting our well-known joke about
the dwellers and sojourners. You remember it? He has, I regret to find,
been counted among the latter, while he has qualified as one of the
former. The mistake must be remedied. Well, good-by to you, Mrs.
Lovegrove; I shall see your good husband on my way downstairs. Good-day
to you, Mr. Iglesias. I shall hope to meet you again."

And with that he, and the encompassing sound of him, moved towards the
door. Mrs. Lovegrove subsided upon the sofa. The supreme glory had
departed, yet an afterglow from the effulgence of it remained in her
beaming face as she looked up at Mr. Iglesias.

"It was a good fairy that brought you in so early to-day," she said.
"Really, I am pleased you should have had the chance to meet Dr.
Nevington. And I could see he was quite taken with you, by the way he
began to talk before I had the chance to introduce you. But that's the
vicar all over! He never is one to stand upon ceremony."

"So I can believe," Dominic said.

"You saw it? Ah, part of his thoughtfulness, wanting to put everybody at
their ease. And I'm sure if there's one thing more disheartening than
another, it is to have two of your friends standing up side by side, as
stiff as a couple of pokers, without so much as a word. I know I am too
ready to enter into conversation with strangers; but if there is a thing
I cannot bear, it's any appearance of coolness."

She passed her handkerchief round her forehead and across her lips. She
was marshalling her energies for a daring effort.

"Very warm, is it not?" she remarked, perhaps superfluously. Then she
came to the point. "I know you are not very much of a churchgoer, Mr.
Iglesias."

"I am afraid not"--he paused a moment. "You see, I was born and brought
up in another faith."

"Yes--so George has told me. But I am sure none of us would ever be so
illiberal as to throw that up against you. The vicar has been talking so
beautifully about Christian charity; and we all know it was a thing you
could not help. It was your misfortune, anybody would understand that,
not your fault. Too, it's all over long ago and forgotten."

Dominic looked rather hard at her; but it was clear her words were
innocent of any intention of offence.

"I suppose it is," he said sadly, Old Age and Loneliness laying their
hands upon him, for some reason, very sensibly once again.

"Not that that's anything to be otherwise than thankful for," she added,
with a slightly misplaced effort at consolation. "Of course anyone must
feel how providential it is to be saved from all those terrible false
doctrines and practices--not that I know anything about them. There's so
much, don't you think, it is so much better not to know anything about.
Then one feels more at liberty to speak."

Mr. Iglesias smiled.

"I am not sure that the matter had occurred from exactly that point of
view before."

"Really now, and a clever person like you!" Mrs. Lovegrove passed her
handkerchief across her forehead again. "George has a wonderful opinion
of your cleverness, you know. And that is why I have always wished you
and the vicar could be brought together. I have--yes, I own to it--I have
been afraid sometimes you were a little unsettled about religion, and
that it might unsettle Georgie, too. But I knew if you once met the vicar
that would all be set right. As I often say to George, let anybody just
_see_ Dr. Nevington and then they will begin to have an inkling of all
they miss in not hearing him in the pulpit."

But here, perhaps fortunately, the master of the house trotted back. He,
too, beamed. He was filled with innocent rejoicing. Had he not
successfully protected the wife's feelings, and was not Iglesias--who
remained to him a wonderful being, stirring whatever element of romance
might be resident in his guileless nature--present in person?

"Why, what's the meaning of this, Dominic?" he chuckled. "You've turned
over a new leaf, gadding round to at-home days! Where's Threadneedle
Street? What's come over you?"

"Threadneedle Street and I have agreed to part company."

"What, for good? Never?" this from both husband and wife.

"Yes, for good," Iglesias said.

Mr. Lovegrove ceased to beam. He became anxious again, and consequently
solemn.

"Well, you do surprise me," he said. "Nothing gone wrong, I trust? Not
any unpleasantness happened?"

"None," Iglesias answered. In breaking the news to these kindly but
rudimentary souls he had determined to treat it very lightly. "I have
come to the conclusion that I have worked long enough. It is a mistake to
risk dying in harness. You retired, Lovegrove, three years ago. I am
going to look about me a little and see what the rest of the world is
doing."

"You'll miss the bank, and feel a little strange at first. Georgie did,
though he had his home to interest him," Mrs. Lovegrove remarked.

"Undoubtedly George was more fortunate than I am," Iglesias replied, in
his most courtly manner.

"Not but that all that could be easily remedied," she added, with a touch
of archness. Then Mr. Iglesias thought it time to depart. In the hall his
host held him, literally by the buttonhole, looking up with squinting
blue eyes into his face.

"It's all rather sudden, Dominic," he said. "I do not want to intrude
upon your confidence; but if there is anything behind, anything in which
I can help?"

Mr. Iglesias shook his head.

"Nothing, my good old friend," he said.

"The wife's right, you know. You'll miss the bank, the regular hours, and
the occupation. She's quite right. I did at first."

"I know. But already I have pretty well got through that phase, I think."

"Ah, you have a bigger mind than mine. You can rise to a wider view.
Change affects a commonplace man like myself most. I was dreadfully lost
at first--more than the wife knew. Females are very sensitive, and it
would have hurt her to know all I felt. If the Almighty is good enough to
give a man a faithful woman to look after him, he can't be too scrupulous
in sparing her pain--at least, so I think." Suddenly his tone changed.
"But you are not going to leave us, Dominic?--you are not going to move,
I do hope?"

He was mindful of his promise to Eliza Hart, but he was also mindful of
himself. It had occurred to him for how very much in the interest and
pleasure of his life Dominic Iglesias really stood.

"Why, should you regret my going? Should you miss me?" the other asked,
struck by his tone.

"Miss you," he said, "and after a friendship covering forty years! I know
you are my superior in every way. I know I am not on your level. All the
advantage is on my side in our friendship, always has been. But that is
just where it is. Why, you know, Dominic--next to the wife of course--all
along you have been the best thing I had."

Then it came to Iglesias, looking down at him, that among the many
millions of his fellow-mortals, this whimsical childlike being stood
nearest to him in sympathy and in love. The thought moved him strangely,
at once deepening his sense of isolation and lessening the load of it.

"In that case I will not move. I will stay here, at Trimmer's Green," he
said.

When Mr. Lovegrove reentered the sun-faded drawing-room his wife greeted
him in these words:

"Well, I have been thinking it all over, Georgie, and we shall only be
doing our duty by Mr. Iglesias if we send for your cousin Serena. For my
part, I don't trust Mrs. Porcher. Did you see that fly-away blue bow?
Those who seem so soft are often the deepest. And widows have all sorts
of little cunning ways with them." She rose from the thrice happy sofa.
"I was gratified to have Dr. Nevington and Mr. Iglesias meet. But we
certainly will have to send for Serena," she said.




CHAPTER VII


Mr. Iglesias crossed Trimmer's Green in the dusty sunshine. He had
engaged to stay; and, indeed, he asked himself what person, what objects
or interests there were to take him else-whither? Nevertheless, the
promise seemed, somehow, a limiting of possibility and of hope. It was
destiny. London, very evidently, having got him, did not mean to let him
go. And London was not attractive this evening, but blouzy and jaded from
the heat. He passed on into the great thoroughfare and turned eastward,
absorbed in thought. Children cried. A pungent scent of over-ripe fruit
came from barrows in the roadway and open doors of green-grocers' shops.
Tempers appeared to be on edge. Workmen, pouring out from a big block of
flats under construction on the left, jostled him in passing, not in
insolence, but simply in inattention. Their language was starred with
sanguinary adjectives. The noise of the traffic was loud. Iglesias turned
up one of the side streets leading on to Campden Hill. It was quieter
here and the air was a trifle purer. Halfway up the hill he hesitated.
There was a shrine to be visited in these regions--in it stood an altar
of the dead. And above that altar, in Iglesias' imagination, hung the
picture of a woman, beautiful, and, to him, infinitely sad.

He turned eastward again and made his way into Holland Street. He rarely
had the courage to go back there. He had never reentered the house. But
this evening he was taken by the desire to look on it all once again. For
he was still pursued by the disquieting question as to whether he had
shirked the possibilities of his life, or had sacrificed them to a higher
duty than any duty of personal development. If the latter, however barren
of active happiness both past and present, he would be in his own eyes
justified, and desolation would cease to have in it any flavour of self-
contempt. Perhaps this dwelling-place of his childhood, youth, and what
should have been the best of his manhood, might help to answer the
question and set his doubts at rest.

A board--"To Let"--was up on the narrow iron balcony of the dining-room.
Iglesias rang, and after brief parley with the caretaker--a neat bald-
headed little old man, in carpet slippers and a well-brushed once-smart
brown check suit, altogether too capacious for his attenuated person--was
admitted.

"The place is quite empty save for my bits of sticks in the basement,
sir," he said. "You are at liberty to go where you please. I am afflicted
with the asthma and am glad to avoid mounting the stairs." He ended up
with a husky little cough. So Iglesias passed through the vacant house
unattended.

He received a pathetic yet agitating impression. The rooms were even
smaller than he had supposed. They were gloomy, too, from the worn paint
of the high wainscots and discoloration of the low ceilings. All the
windows were shut and the atmosphere was close and faint. The corners
were thick with crouching shadows, merely awaiting the cover of night, as
it seemed to Iglesias, to take definite shape, stand upright, and come
forth to possess and people all the house. Even now it belonged so
sensibly to them that his own reverent footsteps sounded to him harshly
intrusive upon the bare, uneven floors. At intervals, downstairs in the
basement, he could hear the little old caretaker's husky cough.

And it was strange to him to consider what those crouching shadows might
represent. Not the ghosts of human beings--in such he had small belief--
but an aftermath of human emotions, purposes, and passions, formulated or
endured in this apparently so innocent place. To his knowledge the
origins of revolution had seethed here. The walls had listened to details
of political intrigue, of projected assassination, to vehement
declarations of undying hate. Of the men who had plotted and dreamed
here, uplifted in spirit by the magic of terrible ideas, none were left.
One by one they had gone out into the silence to meet death, swift-handed
or heartlessly lingering, as the case might be. And what had they
actually accomplished? he asked himself. Had their death, often as must
be surmised of a sufficiently hideous sort, really advanced the cause of
humanity and helped on the birth of that Golden Age, in which Justice
shall reign alongside Peace? Or had these men merely wasted themselves,
adding to the sum total of human confusion and wrong; and wasted the
hearts and happiness of those allied to them by ties of friendship and of
blood, leaving the second generation to repair, in so far as it might,
the ruin which their violence had worked? Dominic Iglesias could not say.
But this at least, though it savoured of reproach, he could not disguise
from himself--namely, that out of the intemperate heat and fierceness of
these men's thought and action had come, as a necessary consequence, the
narrow opportunities and cold isolation of his own.

"As physically, so morally, spiritually, socially," he said to himself,
"the younger generation pays the debts contracted by the generation
immediately preceding it. Justice, indeed, reigns already, always has
done so--. justice of a rather tremendous sort. But peace?--Peace is
still very much to seek, both for the individual and the race."

Iglesias visited his mother's bed-chamber. He visited his former nursery.
Then he visited the drawing-room, the heart of this very pathetic shrine
where the altar of his dead was, almost visibly set up. To this room,
during the many years of his mother's mental illness, he had come back
daily after work; and had ministered to her, suiting his speech to her
passing humour, trying to distract her brooding melancholy, and to soothe
and amuse her as though she was an ailing child. Thank God, there was
nothing ugly to remember regarding her. She had never been harsh or
unlovely in her ways. Still, the strain of constant intercourse with her
had been very great--how great Iglesias had hardly realised until now, as
he stood in the centre of the room reconstructing its former appearance
in thought and replacing its familiar furnishings.

There to the left of the further window, overlooking the garden, she had
always sat, so that the light might fall upon her needlework--very fine
Irish lace, in the making of which nearly all her waking hours were
spent. She had learned the beautiful art as a young girl in her convent
school; and her skill in it was great. In those sad later years when her
mind was clouded the intricate designs and endless variety of delicate
and ingenious stitches had come to have symbolic meanings for her full of
mystic significance. In them she poured forth her soul, as another might
pour it forth in music, finding there an imaginative language far
surpassing, in its subtlety of suggestion, articulate speech. There were
deserts of net, of spider's web fineness, to be laboriously traversed;
hills of difficulty to be climbed, whence far horizons disclosed
themselves; dainty flower-gardens, crossed by open paths, and hedged
about with curves, sinuous and full of pretty impediments. And there
were, to her, vaguely agitating and even fearful things in this lacework
also--confusions of outline, broken purposes, multiplicity of opposing
intentions, struggle of good and evil powers in the intricacies of some
rich arabesque; or monotonous repetitions of design which distressed her
as with the terrors of imprisonment and of unescapable fate. She was
filled with feverish anxiety until such portions of her self-imposed
task were completed. Then she would be very glad. And Iglesias, glancing
up silently from the pages of his newspaper or book, would see the sorrow
pass out of her face as she leaned back in her chair and softly laughed.
And he would perceive that, in the achievement of those countless but
carefully ordered stitches, she had also achieved some mysterious victory
of the spirit which, for a time at least, would give her freedom of soul
and content. As a boy he had been rather jealous of her lacemaking,
declaring that it was dearer to her than he himself was. But as he grew
more experienced, more chastened, and, it must be added, more sad, he had
come to understand that it veritably was as speech to her--though speech
which he could but rarely interpret--expressing all that she could not,
or dared not, otherwise express, all the poetry of her sweet, broken
nature, its denied aspirations in religion, its tortured memories of
danger and of love.

Now, standing in the centre of the empty room, and looking at the place
beside the window where she habitually sat, Iglesias seemed to see once
more, as he had so often seen in the past, her fine-drawn profile and
softly waved upturned hair, her head and shoulders draped in a black
mantilla, the lines of which followed those of her figure as she bent
over her work. He could see the long delicate white hands moving
rhythmically, with the assurance of perfected skill, over the web in its
varying degrees of whiteness from the filmy transparency of the net
foundation to the opacity of the closely wrought pattern. Those hands, in
their ceaseless and exquisite industry, had troubled his imagination at
times. For too often it had seemed as though they alone were really
alive, intelligent, sentient, the rest of the woman dead. The impression
was so vivid even yet--though Iglesias knew it to be subjective only,
projected by the vividness of remembrance--that instinctively he crossed
the room, laid his left hand upon the moulding of the high wainscot,
leaned over the vacant space which appeared to hold her image, and spoke
gently to her, so that the moving hands might find rest for a moment,
while she recognised and greeted him, looking up.

There had always been a pause before the words of greeting came, while
her consciousness travelled back, hesitatingly, to the actual and
material world around her from the world of emotion and phantasy in which
her spirit lived. There was a pause now, a prolonged silence, broken at
last by the husky cough of the little old caretaker downstairs. The
vacant space remained vacant. Nevertheless Dominic Iglesias received both
recognition and greeting, and from these derived inward assurance that
all was well--that he was justified of his past action, that he had not
shirked the possibilities of his life, but sacrificed them to a higher
duty than any individual and private one. The present might be empty of
purpose and pleasure, the future lacking in promise and in hope; yet to
him one perfect thing had been granted--namely, a human relationship of
unsullied beauty, notwithstanding all its sadness, from first to last.

"And in the strength of that meat, one should surely be able to go many
days!" he said, as he straightened himself up. "Thank God, I never failed
her. How far she realised it or not, is but a small matter. I am obscure,
perhaps as things now stand wholly superfluous, still I have, at all
events, never grasped personal advantage at the expense of a fellow-
creature's heart."

Yet, even so, the longing for sympathy and companionship oppressed him as
never before. The sight of this place had stirred his affections and his
spiritual sense. His soul cried out for some language in which to express
itself--even though it were a language of symbol only, such as his
mother had found in her lacemaking. How barren and vapid a thing was the
exterior life, as all those whom he knew understood and lived it--his co-
lodgers, his fellow-clerks, the good Lovegroves, his late employer, Sir
Abel Barking, even, as he divined, that sonorous Protestant clergyman
whom he had met this afternoon--as against the interior life, suggestion
of which this vacant shadow-haunted house of innumerable memories
presented to his mind! Was there any method by which the interior and
exterior life could be brought into sane and fruitful relation, so that
the former might sensibly permeate and dignify the latter?

The comfortable inward conviction, just vouchsafed him, that he was
justified of his own past action, merely emphasised his consciousness
that he was still very much adrift, with no definite port to steer for.
He had, perhaps unwisely, promised George Lovegrove that he would stay on
at Trimmer's Green, but what, after all, did that amount to? Even the
exterior life was second-hand enough there; the interior life, as he
judged, practically non-existent. And so his staying must be ennobled by
some purpose beyond that of stepping across to smoke an after-dinner pipe
with the good, affectionate Lovegrove man, or attending his estimable
wife's "at homes." During the last ten days Mr. Iglesias had striven,
with rare, pathetic diligence, to cultivate amusement. True, the oak
palings had shut him out from Ranelagh; but, with that and a few other
exceptions, amusement, as practised in great cities, is merely a matter
of cash. Therefore he had dined at smart restaurants, had sampled
theatres and music halls, had sat in the Park and watched the world and--
in their more decent manifestations--the flesh and the devil drive by. He
had to admit that unfortunately all this left him cold, had bored rather
than entertained him. He had not felt out of place socially. His natural
dignity and detachment of mind were alike too strong for that; but he had
arrived at the conclusion that you must have learned the rudiments of the
art of amusement in early youth if you are to practise it with
satisfaction to yourself in middle-age. And he very certainly had not
learned the rudiments--not, anyhow, according to the English fashion. He
had been aware, during these social excursions, that he was a good deal
stared at and even commented on. At first he supposed this arose from
some peculiarity of his dress or manner. Then he understood that the
cause of this unsolicited attention bore a more flattering character, and
in this connection certain remarks made by the Lady of the Windswept Dust
occurred to his mind. But, Mr. Iglesias' pride being greatly in excess of
his vanity--when the first moment of half-humorous surprise was passed--
he found that these tributes to his personal appearance afforded him more
displeasure than pleasure. He turned from them with a movement of
annoyance, and turned from those places in which they were liable to
manifest themselves likewise. No, indeed, it was something other than
this he had to find, something lying far deeper in the needs of human
nature, if the emptiness of his days was to be filled and the hunger of
his heart and spirit satisfied!

Pondering which things he went down the creaking stairs of the house in
Holland Street, Kensington, leaving the empty and, to him, sacred rooms
to the crouching shadows. He had had his answer from the one person whom
he had perfectly loved. And surely, in justifying the past, that answer
gave promise of hope for the future? The way would be made clear, the
method would declare itself. Let him have patience, only patience, as
she, his mother, had had when traversing deserts and climbing Difficulty
Hill in her lacework; and to him, also, should far horizons be disclosed.

In the narrow hall the neat little old caretaker met him, huskily
coughing.

"The rent is low, sir," he said, "and the landlord is asking no premium.
If you should wish further particulars, or to inspect the offices----"

But Mr. Iglesias put a couple of half-crowns into his hand.

"No," he answered, "I do not propose to take the house. Persons who were
dear to me lived here once; and so I wanted to see it. As long as it is
unlet I may come back from time to time."

The old man shuffled his slippered feet upon the bare boards, looking
with mild ecstasy at the coins.

"And you will be most welcome, sir," he said. "Your generosity happens to
be of great assistance to me--not that I wish it repeated. I am not
grasping, sir, but I am grateful. I have a taste in literature which my
reduced circumstances do not allow me to gratify. I see the prospect of
many hours' enjoyment before me. I thank you."




CHAPTER VIII


And so it came about that a more tranquil spirit, touched with sober
gladness, possessed Dominic Iglesias as, leaving that house of many
memories, he pursued his way down Church Street and, passing into
Kensington High Street opposite St. Mary Abbot's Church, turned eastward
once again. A few doors short of the gateway leading into Palace Gardens
was an unpretentious Italian restaurant where he proposed to dine. For it
grew late. He had spent longer than he had supposed in wordless prayer
before the altar of his dead. The remembrance of the book-loving little
caretaker's gratitude remained by him pleasantly, softening his humour
towards all his fellow-men. Simple kindness has great virtue, uplifting
to the heart. To Iglesias it seemed those five shillings had been
eminently well invested.

The streets were clearer now; and he walked slowly, enjoying the cooler
air born of the sunset, and drawing from the leafy spaces of Kensington
Gardens and the park. Presently he became aware of a figure, not
altogether unfamiliar, threading its way among the intermittent stream of
pedestrians along the pavement a few paces ahead. His eyes followed it
reluctantly. In his present peaceful humour its aspect struck a jarring
note. Soiled white flannel trousers, a short blue boating coat, a soft
grey felt hat, tennis shoes, a shambling and uncertain gait as of one who
neither knows nor cares whither he is going or why he goes--the whole
effect purposeless, slovenly, inept.

Then followed a little scene which caused Iglesias to further slacken his
pace. For the seedy figure, reaching the open door of the restaurant,
hesitated, standing between the clipped bay trees set in green tubs which
flanked the entrance on either hand. Stepped aside, craning upward to see
over the yellow silk curtains drawn across the lower half of the windows.
Moved back to the door and stood there undecided. Finally, as a smiling
waiter, napkin on arm, came forward, the man crushed his hat down on his
forehead, forced his hands deep into his trouser pockets and turned away
with an audible oath. This brought him face to face with Mr. Iglesias,
who recognised in him his fellow-lodger, Mr. de Courcy Smyth.

"What, you!" he exclaimed snarlingly, while his pasty face flamed. "There
seems no escape from our dear Cedar Lodge to-night."

Then with an uneasy laugh he made an effort to recover himself.

"Really, I beg your pardon, Mr. Iglesias," he continued, "but my nerves
are villainously on edge. I have just met those two young idiots, Farge
and Worthington, waltzing home arm in arm like a pair of demented turtle-
doves. Having to associate with such third-rate commercial fellows and
witness their ebullitions of mutual admiration makes a man of education,
like myself, utterly sick. I came out this evening to get free of the
whole Cedar Lodge lot. You did the same, I suppose. Pray don't let me
frustrate your purpose. I sympathise with it. I will remove myself."

The splotchy red had died out of the speaker's face. Notwithstanding the
warmth of the evening he stood with his shoulders raised and his knees a
little bent, as a poorly clad man stands in a chill wind on a wintry day.
Iglesias observed his attitude, and in his present mood it influenced him
more than the surly greeting had done.

"I intended to dine here," he said quietly. "So, I fancy, did you."

"Oh! I have changed my mind, thank you," Smyth answered.

"In consequence of my arrival, I am afraid?"

"No, I had other reasons."

"In any case I should be very glad if you would reconsider your decision
and remain," Dominic said. "I am, as you see, alone, and I have not often
the pleasure of meeting you. I shall be very happy if you will stay and
dine with me, as my guest."

Smyth gave an odd, furtive look at the open door of the restaurant and
the row of white tables within. A light had come into his pale blue eyes,
making them uncomfortably like those of some half-starved animal.

"I am at a loss to know why I should accept hospitality from you," he
remarked, at once cringingly and insolently.

"Simply because you would give me pleasure by doing so. I should value
your society."

"I am not in evening dress."

"Nor am I," Dominic answered, with admirable seriousness. There was
something pitiful to him in the conflict, obviously going forward in the
other's mind, between hunger and reluctance to incur an obligation. He
cut it short with gentle authority. "There is a vacant table in the
corner where we can talk free from interruption. Let us go in and secure
it."

At the beginning of the meal the conversation was intermittent, the
burden of supporting it lying with Mr. Iglesias. But, as course followed
course, hot and succulent, while the _chianti_ at once steadied his
circulation and stimulated his brain, de Courcy Smyth became talkative,
not to say garrulous. Finally he began to assert himself, to swagger,
thereby laying bare the waste places of his own nature.

"You may think I was hard on Farge and Worthington just now, Mr.
Iglesias," he said. "I own they disgust me; not only in themselves, but
as examples of certain modern tendencies which are choking the life out
of me and such men as me. You business people are on the up grade just
now, and you know it. Whoever goes under, you are safe to do yourselves
most uncommonly well. I don't mean anything personal, of course. I am
just stating a self-evident fact. Commerce is in the air--you all reek of
success. And so even shopwalkers, like Worthington, and that thrice
odious puppy Farge, grow sleek, and venture to spread themselves in the
presence of their betters--in the presence of a scholar and a gentleman,
who is well connected and has received a classical education, like
myself."

Smyth paused, turning sideways to the table, leaning his elbow on it,
crossing his legs and staring gloomily down the long room.

"But what do they know or care about scholarship?" he continued. "What
they do know is that the spirit of this unspeakably vulgar age is with
them and their miserable huckstering. They know that well enough and act
upon it, though they are too illiterate to put it into words--know that
trade is in process of exploding learning, of exploiting literature and
art to its own low purposes, in process of scaling Olympus, in short, and
ignominiously chucking out the gods."

Dominic Iglesias had listened to this astonishing tirade in silence. The
man was evidently suffering from feelings of bitter injury, also he was
his--Iglesias'--guest. Both pity and hospitality engaged him to
endurance. But there are limits. And at this point professional dignity
and a lingering loyalty towards the house of Barking Brothers & Barking
enjoined protest.

"No doubt we live in times of commerce, rather than in those of
chivalry," he remarked. "Still, I venture to think your condemnation is
too sweeping. One should discriminate surely between trade and finance."

"Only as one discriminates between a little dog and a big one. The little
dog is the easier to kick. I can't get at the Rothschilds and
Rockefellers; and so I go for the Farges and Worthingtons," Smyth
answered. "In principle I am right. Trade, commerce, finance, juggle with
the names as you like, it all comes back to the same thing in the end,
namely, the murder of intellect by money. Comes back to the worship of
Mammon, chosen ruler of this contemptible _fin de siecle_, and safe to be
even more tyrannously the ruler of the coming century. What hope, I ask
you, is left for us poor devils of literary men? None, absolutely none.
Just in proportion as we honour our calling and refuse to prostitute our
talents we are at a discount. The powers that be have no earthly use for
us. We have not the ghost of a chance."

He altered his position, looking quickly and nervously at his host.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "For the moment I forgot you were on the
other side, among the conquerors, not the conquered. Probably this
conversation does not interest you in the least."

"On the contrary, it interests me very deeply," Dominic replied gravely.

"All the same, out of self-respect I ought to hold my tongue about it, I
suppose. For I have accepted the position, Mr. Iglesias. I have learned
to do that. Only on each fresh occasion that it is brought home to me--
and it has been brought home abominably clearly to-night--my gorge rises
at it. And it ought to be so. For it is an outrage--you yourself must
admit--that a man who started with excellent prospects and with the
consciousness of unusual talents--of genius, perhaps--should be ruined
and broken, while every miserable little counter-jumper----"

He leaned his elbows on the table, hiding his face in his hands, and his
shoulders shook.

"For I have talent," he cried, in a curiously thin voice. "Before God I
have. They may refuse to publish me, refuse to play me, force me to pick
up scraps of hack-work on fourth-rate papers to earn a bare subsistence--
at times hardly that. Yet all the same, no supercilious beast of an
editor or actor-manager--curse the whole stinking lot--shall rob me of my
faith in myself--of my belief that I am great--if I had justice, nothing
less than that, I tell you, nothing less than great."

Dominic Iglesias drew himself up, sitting very still, his lips rigid, not
from defect, but from excess of sympathy. The restaurant was empty now,
save for a man, four tables down, safely ensconced behind the pink pages
of an evening paper, and for a couple, at the far end, in the window--a
young Frenchwoman, whose coquettish hat and trim rounded figure were
silhouetted against the yellow silk curtain, and a precocious black-
haired youth, with a skin like pale, pink satin, round eyeglasses and an
incipient moustache. His attention was entirely occupied with the young
woman; hers entirely occupied with herself. And of this Dominic Iglesias
was glad. For the matter immediately in hand was best conducted without
witnesses. He found it strangely engrossing, strangely moving. However
vain, however madly exaggerated even, de Courcy Smyth's estimate of
himself, there could be no question but that his present emotion was as
actual and genuine as his past hunger had been. The man was utterly spent
in body and in spirit. Offensive in speech, slovenly in person, yet these
distasteful things added to, rather than detracted from, Iglesias' going
out of sympathy towards him. He had rarely been in contact with a fellow-
creature in such abandonment of distress. It was terrible to witness; yet
it gave him a sense of fellowship, of nearness, even of power, which had
in it an element of deep-seated satisfaction. While he waited for the
moment when it should become clear to him how to act, his thought
travelled back to the Lady of the Windswept Dust. He saw, not her over-
red lips, but her serious eyes; saw her tearful and in a way broken, for
all her light speech, her fanciful garments, and her antics with her
absurd little dogs amid the sweetness of sunshine and summer breeze on
Barnes Common. She was far enough away, so he judged, in sentiment and
circumstance from the embittered and poverty-haunted man sitting opposite
to him. Yet though superficially so dissimilar, they were alike in this,
that both had dared to reveal themselves, passing beyond conventional
limits in intercourse with him, Iglesias. Both had cried out to him in
their distress. And then, thinking of that recently visited altar of the
dead, thinking of the one perfect relationship he had known--his
relationship to his mother--it came to him as a revelation that not
participation in the pride of life and the splendour of it--still less
association in mere pleasure and amusement--forms the cement which binds
together the units of humanity in stable and consoling relationship; but
association in sorrow, the cry for help and the response to that cry,
whether it be help to the staying of the hunger of the heart and of the
intellect, or simply to the staying of that baser yet very searching
hunger of overstrained nerves and an empty stomach. The revelation was
partial. Iglesias groped, so to speak, in the light of it uncertain and
dazzled. But he received it as real--an idea the magnitude of which, in
inspiration and application, he was as yet by no means equal to measure.
Still he believed that could he but yield himself to it, and, in
yielding, master it, it would carry him very far, teaching him that
language of the spirit which he desired to acquire; and hence placing in
his hand that earnestly coveted key to an adjustment between the exterior
and interior life, the life of the senses and the life of the spirit,
which must needs eventuate, manward and godward alike, in triumphant
harmony.

Meanwhile there sat de Courcy Smyth, blear-eyed, sandy-red bearded,
unsavoury, trying, poor wretch, to rally whatever of manhood was left in
him and swagger himself out of his fit of hysteria. The Latin, however
dignified, is instinctively more demonstrative than the Anglo-Saxon.
Iglesias leaned across the table and laid his hand on the other man's
shoulder.

"Wait a little," he said. "Drink your coffee and smoke. We need not hurry
to move."

There was a pause, during which Smyth obediently swallowed his coffee,
swallowed his _chasse_ of cognac.

"I have made an egregious ass of myself," he said sullenly.

"No, no," Iglesias answered. "You have honoured me by taking me into your
confidence. It rests with me to see that you never have cause to regret
having done so."

"I believe you mean that."

"Certainly I mean it," Iglesias answered.

Smyth's hands trembled as he took a cigar and held a match to it.

"I am unaccustomed to meeting with kindness," he said in a low voice. Then
recovering himself somewhat, he began to speak volubly again. "Of course
I understand it all well enough. They are simply afraid of my work, those
beasts of editors and playwrights. It is too big for them, they dare not
face it and the consequences of it. It is strong stuff, Mr. Iglesias,
strong stuff with plenty of red blood in it, and with scholarship, too.
And so they pigeon-hole my stories and drames in self-defence, knowing
that if these once reached the public, either in print or in action,
their own fly-blown anaemic productions would be hissed off the stage or
would ruin the circulation of the periodical which inserted them. It is
all jealousy, I tell you, Mr. Iglesias, rank, snakish jealousy, bred by
self-interest out of fear--a truly exalted parentage!"

He shifted his position restlessly, again setting his elbows upon the
table and fingering the broken bread upon the cloth.

"At times, when I can rise above the immediate injustice and cruelty
which pursue me," he went on, "I glory in my martyrdom. I range myself
alongside those heroes of literature and art, who, because they were
ahead of the age in which they lived, were scorned and repudiated by
their contemporaries; but they found their revenge in the worship of
succeeding generations. My time will come just as theirs did. It must--I
tell you it must. I know that. I am safe of eventual recognition; but I
want it now, while I am alive, while I can glut myself with the joy of
it. I want to see the men who lord it over me, just because they have
influence and money, who affect to despise me because they are green with
envy and fear of me, brought to their knees, flattened so that I can wipe
my boots on them. And--and"--he looked full at Dominic Iglesias,
spreading out both hands across the narrow table, his pale prominent eyes
blood-shot, his face working--"I want to see someone else--a woman--
brought to her knees also. I want to make her feel what she has lost--
curse her!--and have her come back whining."

"And if she did come back," Iglesias asked, almost sternly, "what would
you do? Forgive her?"

De Courcy Smyth's hands dropped with a queer little thud on the table.

"I don't know. I suppose so. If she wanted to she could always get round
me." Then he turned on Iglesias with hysterical violence. "But what do
you know? Why do you ask that? Are you among her patrons? I trusted you.
I believed you were a gentleman in feeling--and it is a dirty trick to
get me in here and fill me up with food and liquor, when you must have
seen my nerves were all to pieces, and then spring this upon me. Oh!
hell!" he cried, "is there no comfort anywhere? Is everyone a traitor?"

And seeing his utter abjectness, Iglesias' heart went out to the unhappy
man in immense and unqualified pity.

"I am grieved," he said gently, "if I have pained you unnecessarily. But
truly I have sprung nothing upon you. How could I do so? I know nothing
whatever of your circumstances save that which you yourself have told me
during the last hour."

"Then why did you ask that question about--about her?"

"Because," Dominic answered, "I am ready to fight for you, in as far as
you will allow me to do so; but I do not fight against women."

"You must have had uncommonly little experience of them then," Smyth
answered with a sneer.

To this observation Mr. Iglesias deemed it superfluous to make any
answer. A silence followed. The restaurant was empty, but for the
waiters, who stood in a little knot about the door amusing themselves by
watching the movement of the street. Looking round to make sure no one
was within hearing, Smyth rose unsteadily to his feet.

"You meant what you said just now, Mr. Iglesias--that you were ready to
fight for me?" he asked ungently yet cringingly.

"Certainly I meant it," Dominic replied, "the proviso I have made being
respected."

"Yes, yes, of course--but what do you understand by fighting for me?
Money?"

Dominic had risen, too. He remained for a moment in thought.

"Within reasonable relation to my means, yes," he said.

"I only want my chance," the other asserted. "The rest will follow as a
matter of course. You would risk nothing, Mr. Iglesias. It would be an
investment, simply an investment. The play is not finished yet--I have
been too disheartened and disgusted recently to be able to work at it.
But it is great, I tell you, great. When it is done will you give me my
chance, and take a theatre for me and finance a couple of _matinees?_"

Again Dominic Iglesias thought for a moment, and again, driven by that
strange necessity of fellowship--though knowing all the while he was
putting his hand to a very questionable adventure--he replied in the
affirmative.




CHAPTER IX


On that same evening, and at the same hour at which Dominic Iglesias
bound himself to the practical assistance of a personally unsavoury and
professionally unsuccessful playwright, a conversation was in progress
between two persons of more exalted social station in the drawing-room of
a pleasant house in Chester Square. The said drawing-room, mid-Victorian
in aspect, was decorated in white and gold and unaggressive green. The
ground of the chintz was very white, sprinkled over with bunches of
shaded mauve roses unknown to horticulture. Lady Constance Decies' tea-
grown was white and mauve also. For she was still in half-mourning for
her father, the late Lord Fallowfeild, who had died some eighteen months
previously at a very venerable age, and with a touching modesty as though
his advent in another world might savour of intrusion. He had always been
a humble-minded man. He remained so to the last.

The windows stood open to the balcony. And the effect of the woman, and
of the soft lights and colours surrounding her, was reposeful. For at the
age of fifty Lady Constance, though stately, was a mild and very gentle
person upon whom the push of the modern world had laid no hand. All the
active drama of her life had been crowded into a few weeks of the early
summer of her eighteenth year; since which, now remote, period she had
enjoyed a tranquil existence, happy in the love of her husband and the
care of her children. Her pretty brown hair was beginning to turn grey
upon the temples. Her eyes, set remarkably far apart, had a certain
vagueness and a great innocence of expression. She was naturally timid,
and cared but little for any society beyond that of her near relations.
To-night she was particularly content, mildly radiant even, thanks to the
presence of her favourite brother, the present Lord Fallowfeild, and his
avowed admiration of her younger daughter--a maiden of nineteen, who
stood before her, with shining eyes, in all the delicate splendour of a
spotless ball-dress.

"Yes, darling, you look very sweet," she said. "Just lean down--the lace
has got caught in the flowers on your _berthe_. That's right. Don't keep
your father too late."

"And in all things be discreet"--this from Lord Fallowfeild. "It's been
my motto through life, as your mother knows. And you couldn't have a
brighter example of the excellent results of it than myself. Good-night,
my dear. Enjoy yourself," and he patted her on the cheek, avoiding the
kiss which she in all innocence proffered him. "Pretty child, Kathleen,
uncommonly pretty," he continued as the door closed behind the graceful
figure. "It strikes me, Con, your girls have all the good looks of the
family in the younger generation, with the exception of Violet Aldham.
But she's getting pinched, a bit pinched and witch-like. Then she makes
up too much. I have no prejudice against a woman's improving upon nature
where nature's been niggardly. But it is among the things that'll keep.
It's a mistake to begin it too early. In my opinion Violet has begun it
too early--might quite well have given herself another ten years'
grace.--Maggie's girls are gawky, you know; and, between ourselves, so
terribly flat, poor things, both fore and aft. Upon my word, I'm not
surprised they don't marry."

"I am afraid Maggie feels it a good deal," said Lady Constance.
Satisfaction mingled with pity in her soul. The disabilities of other
women's children are never wholly distressing to a tender mother's heart.
"You see, she's so anxious the girls should not marry the bishop's
chaplains; and yet really they hardly see any other young men. I think it
is a very difficult position, that of a bishop's wife."

Lord Fallowfeild smiled, settling himself back in the corner of the wide
sofa and crossing his long legs. He had thought more deeply on a good
many subjects than the majority of his acquaintance supposed; with the
consequence that he occasionally surprised his fellow-peers by the
acuteness of his observations in debate. Lord Fallowfeild, it may be
added, took his recently acquired office of hereditary legislator with a
commendable mixture of humour and seriousness.

"Their position is an anomalous one," he said; "and an anomalous position
is inevitably a difficult one--ought to be SO; in my opinion. But that's
not to the point. We were talking, not about the episcopal ladies, but
about this little business of Kathleen's. So you believe Lady Sokeington
has views and intentions?"

"I know that she has. But you see, Shotover," Lady Constance went on,
returning to the name which that gentleman had rendered somewhat
notorious in earlier years by a record in sport, in debts, in amours, and
in irresistible sweetness of temper--"I want to be quite sure he is
really good. Because the affair has not gone very far yet and it might be
put a stop to--at least I hope and think it might--without making darling
Kathleen too dreadfully unhappy. You do believe he really is good?"

Lord Fallowfeild leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible atom of
fluff off his left trouser leg just above the ankle.

"My dear Con," he answered, "you are very charming, but you are a trifle
embarrassing, too, you know. Haven't you learned, even at this time of
day, that very few men in our world are good in a good woman's sense of
the word?"

Lady Constance's smooth forehead puckered into fine little lines.

"Shotover, dear," she said, "you're not getting embittered, I hope?"

"Me? Bless you, no, never in life!" he returned, smiling very
reassuringly at her. "Don't worry yourself under that head. I quarrel
with nobody and nothing, not even the consequences of my past iniquities.
It is a very just world, take it all round, and has been kinder to me
than I deserve."

"Oh! but you do nothing, you--you are what--you won't think me rude,
Shotover?--what the boys call 'very decent' now."

Lady Constance spoke hurriedly, her colour rising in the most engaging
manner.

"As decent as I know how, you dear soul," he said, taking her hand in
his. "But that makes no difference to one's knowledge of one's own ways,
in the past, or of the ways of other men."

"But Alaric Barking?"

"Neither better nor worse than the rest."

Then Lord Fallowfeild shut his small and beautiful mouth very tight, as
though he would be glad to avoid further cross-questioning. Lady
Constance's forehead remained puckered.

"It's dreadfully difficult when one's girls grow up," she said
plaintively. "One can be comfortable about them, poor darlings, and enjoy
them when they are in the nursery--even in the schoolroom, though
governesses are worrying. They know so much about quantities of subjects
which seem to me not to matter. One never refers to them in ordinary
conversation; and if one should be obliged to it is so easy to ask
somebody to tell one. And yet they manage to make me feel dreadfully
uncomfortable and ignorant because I know nothing about them. But when
they grow up----"

"Who, the governesses?" Lord Fallowfeild inquired. "I never supposed they
stood in need of that process--thought they started out of the egg all
finished, as you might say, and ran about at once like chickens."

"No, no, the girls, poor darlings," Lady Constance replied. "One does get
dreadfully anxious about them, Shotover, really one does--specially if
one has escaped something very frightening oneself and has been very
happy--lest they should fall in love with the wrong people, or lest they
should be anything which one did not know beforehand and then everything
should turn out dreadful. I should be so miserable. I don't think I could
bear it. I know it is wrong to say that, because if one was really good,
one would accept whatever God sent without murmuring. So I could for
myself, I think. In any case I should earnestly try to. But for the
children it is so much harder. If they were unhappy I should feel ashamed
of having had them--as if I'd done something horribly selfish; because,
you see, there can be nothing so delightful as having children."

She looked at Lord Fallowfeild in the most pathetic manner, the corners
of her mouth a-shake. And he took her hand and held it again, touched by
the sincerity of her confused utterance, and the great mother-love
resident in her. Touched, perhaps, by the age-old problem of man and
maid, also.

"Dear little Con, dear little Con," he said, "I'm awfully sorry you
should be worried, but I'm afraid we've got to look facts in the face.
And it's no kindness for me to lie to you about these matters. I don't
pretend to say what's right or what's wrong; I only say what it is. We
can't make society, and the ways of it, all over again even to save
Kathleen a heartache. I don't want to seem a brute, but she must just
take her chance along with the rest of you. Marriage always has been a
confounded uncertain business, and will always remain so, I suppose. The
sort of remedies excited persons suggest to mitigate the dangers of it
are a good deal worse than the disease, in my opinion. Every woman has to
take her chance. Every man has to take his, too, you know--and the chance
strikes some of us as such an uncommonly poor one, that, upon my honour,
it seems safest to wash one's hands of it altogether."

"But you're not unhappy, Shotover, dear? You're not lonely?" Lady
Constance inquired anxiously.

"Abominably so sometimes, Con. But I manage, oh! I manage. I have my
consolations"--he smiled at her, perhaps a trifle shamefacedly. "But now
about Kathleen," he went on, "as I say, she must take her chance along
with the rest of you, poor little dear. After all, you took your chance
when you married Decies, and it has not turned out so badly, you know."

Lady Constance became radiant once more, as some mild-shining summer moon
emerging from behind temporarily obscuring clouds.

"Oh! but then," she said, "of course that was so entirely different."

Lord Fallowfeild patted her hand, his head bent, looking at her somewhat
merrily.

"Was it, my dear, was it?--I wonder," he said.

She withdrew her head with a certain dignity. Notwithstanding her
softness and tenderness, there were occasions--even with those she loved
best--when Lady Constance could delicately mark her displeasure.

"I think you are a little embittered, Shotover," she asserted.

He leaned back, still smiling, and shaking his head at her.

"Old and wise--unpleasantly old, and not quite such a fool as I used to
be, that's all," he answered.

For a time there was silence, both brother and sister thinking their own
thoughts. Then the latter spoke. Like many gentle persons, she was
persistent. She always had been so.

"I should be so grateful if you would tell me, because I think I ought to
know, and then I should try to turn the course of darling Kathleen's
affections before it all becomes too pronounced. Is there any
entanglement, anything amounting to what one calls an impediment, in--
well--you understand--against Alaric Barking?"

Lord Fallowfeild got up, took a turn across the room, came back, and
stood in front of her.

"I wish you wouldn't, Con," he said. "Upon my soul, I wish you wouldn't.
It's a nasty thing for an old man, who has gone the pace in his day
pretty thoroughly, to give away a lad who may have made a slip just at
the start, and who is doing his best to get his feet again and run
straight. Alaric Barking's a good fellow. I like him. I never have been
and never shall be partial to that family. Your sister Louisa cried up
their virtues and their confounded solvency, in the old days, till she
made them a positive nuisance. She's not a happy way of inculcating a
moral economic lesson, hasn't Louisa. But I own I'm fond of this boy.
He's far the best of the whole lot--gentlemanlike, and a sportsman, and
good-looking--unusually so for one of that family--and, my dear, he's
downright honestly in love with Kathleen. I've watched him--did so when
he was down at Ranelagh one day last month with her and Victoria
Sokeington--and I know the real thing when I see it."

"But--but, I am afraid, Shotover, you mean me to understand there is some
impediment?" Lady Constance repeated.

"Oh! well, hang it all, I'm awfully sorry, but if you are determined to
have it, Connie, perhaps there is. Only for heaven's sake don't be in too
much of a hurry. Between ourselves, I happen to know the boy's doing his
best to shake himself free in an honourable manner. So don't rush the
business. Like the dear tender-hearted creature you are, have a little
mercy on the poor beggar. Let the whole affair drift a little. It may
straighten out."

Lady Constance meditated for a minute or so.

"It's very dreadful that there should be any impediment," she said.

"I'll back Alaric to agree with you there," Lord Fallowfeild answered.

"You'll do what you can, Shotover, won't you, to help Kathleen? I never
forget how you helped me once!"

Lord Fallowfeild's handsome face expressed rather broad amusement.

"I'm afraid the two cases are hardly parallel, my dear," he said.




CHAPTER X


"The play's on the other side, the crowd's on the other side, all the
fun's on the other side, and I am on this side with nothing more lively
than you, you little shivering idiot, for company."

Poppy St. John drew the spaniel's long silky ears through her fingers
slowly.

"I am bored, Cappadocia," she said, with a yawn which she made not the
slightest effort to stifle, "bored right through to my very marrow. Oh
dear, oh dear, oh dear, how I do wish something would happen!"

Poppy sat, propped up with scarlet silk cushions, in a cane deck-chair,
on the white-railed balcony upon which the first-floor bedroom windows
opened. Around her were strewn illustrated magazines and ladies' papers;
but unfortunately the stories in the former appeared to her every bit as
silly as the fashion-plates in the latter. Both had equally little to do
with life as the ordinary flesh and blood human being lives it. She was
filled with a rebellious sense of the banality of her surroundings this
afternoon. Even from her coign of vantage upon the balcony, whence wide
prospects disclosed themselves, everything looked foolish, pointless, of
the nature of an unpardonably stale joke.

The said balcony, divided into separate compartments by the interposition
of wooden barriers, extended the whole length of the terrace of twenty-
seven houses. And these were all precisely alike, with white wood and
stucco "enrichments," as the technical phrase has it. Cheap stained and
leaded glass adorned the upper panels of the twenty-seven front doors,
which were approached by twenty-seven flights of steps--thus securing a
measure of light and air to the twenty-seven basements. The front doors
were set in couples, alternating with couples of bay windows. There was a
determination of cheap smartness, a smirking self-consciousness about the
little houses, a suggestion of having put on their best frocks and high-
heeled shoes and standing very much on tiptoe to attract attention. The
balconies, narrow where the upper bays encroached on them, wide where the
house fronts were recessed above the twin front doors, broke forth into a
garland of flower-boxes. Cascades of pink ivy-leaf geranium, creeping-
jenny, and nasturtiums backed by white or yellow Paris daisies, flowed
outward between the white ballusters and masked the edge of the woodwork.
The effect, though pretty, was not quite satisfactory--being suggestive
of millinery, of an over-trimmed summer hat.

Immediately below was the roadway, bordered by an asphalt pavement on
either side, then the high impenetrable oak paling, which had baffled
Dominic Iglesias' maiden effort at participation in the amusements of the
rich. From Poppy's balcony, however, the palings offered no impediment to
observation. All the green expanse of the smaller polo-ground was
visible. So was the whole height of the grove of majestic elms on the
right and the back of the club house; and, and the left, between
_massifs_ of shrubbery, a vista of lawns sloping towards the river
peopled by a sauntering crowd.

It was upon this last that Poppy directed her gaze. To the naked eye the
units composing it showed as vertical lines of grey, brown, and black,
blotted with bright delicate colour, and splashed here and there with
white, the whole mingling, uniting, breaking into fresh combinations
kaleidoscope fashion. Through the opera-glasses figures of men, women,
and horses detached themselves, becoming quaintly distinct, neat as toys,
an assemblage of elegant highly finished marionnettes. There was a
fascination in watching the movement of these brilliant, clear-cut silent
little things upon that amazingly verdant carpet of grass. But it was a
fascination which, for Poppy, had by now worn somewhat thin. The interest
proved too far away, too impersonal. Indeed it may be questioned whether
any who have not within themselves large store of resignation, or of
hope, can look on at gaiety, in which they have no share, without first
sadness and then pretty lively irritation. And of those two most precious
commodities, resignation and hope, Poppy had but limited reserve stock at
present. So she pulled the little dog's ears rather hard and lamented:

"Oh! my good gracious me, if only something would happen!"

Then, the words hardly out of her mouth, she shot the much-enduring
Cappadocia off her lap and, restoring her elbows on the rails, leaned
right out over the balcony.

"Come here, dear beautiful lunatic, come here," she cried. "For pity's
sake don't pass by!"

Perhaps fortunately this very unconventional invitation was lost upon
Dominic Iglesias, soberly crossing the road with due observance of the
eccentricities of the drivers of motor-cars and riders of bicycles.
Looking up, he was aware of a vision quite sufficiently indicative of
welcome, without added indiscretion of words.--The white balustrade, the
trailing fringe of nasturtiums, succulent leaves and orange-scarlet
blossoms; the woman's bust and shoulders in her string-coloured lace
gown, her small face, curiously vivid in effect, capped by the heavy
masses of her black hair, her singular eyes full of light, the red of her
lips and tinge of stationary pink in her cheeks supplemented by a glow of
quick excitement. A few weeks ago the ascetic in Iglesias might have
taken alarm. Now it was different. He had his idea, and, walking in the
strength of it, dared adventure himself in neighbourhoods otherwise
slightly questionable.

Five minutes later Poppy advanced across the little drawing-room to meet
him.

"Well," she said, "of course you might have come sooner. But, equally of
course, you might never have come at all, so I won't quarrel with you
about the delay, though I would like you to know it has worried me a good
deal."

"Has it? I am sorry for that," Dominic answered gravely.

"Yes, be sorry, be sorry," she repeated. "It is comfortable to hear you
say so."

She looked at him with the utmost frankness, took his hand and led him to
a settee filling in the right angle between the fireplace and the double
doors at the back of the room.

"Sit down," she said, "and let us talk. Have another cushion--so--and if
you're good I'll give you tea presently. And understand, you needn't be
careful of yourself. I'll play perfectly fair with you. I've been
thinking it all out during this time you didn't come; and I never go back
on my word once given. So, look here, you needn't account for yourself in
any way. I don't even want to know your name--specially I don't want to
know that. It might localise you, and I don't want to have you localised.
Directly a person is localised it takes away their restfulness to one.
One begins to see just all the places where they belong to somebody else,
notice-boards struck up everywhere warning one to keep off the grass. And
that's a nuisance. It raises Old Nick in one, and makes one long to
commit all manner of wickedness which would never have entered one's head
otherwise."

Poppy held her hands palm to palm between her knees, glancing at Dominic
Iglesias now and again sideways as she spoke. The bodice of her dress,
cut slightly _en coeur_, showed the nape of her neck, and the whole of her
throat, which was smooth and rounded though rather long. Her make
altogether was that not uncommon to London girls of the lower middle-
class: small-boned and possibly anaemic, but prettily moulded, and with an
attraction of over-civilisation as of hot-house-grown plants. Just now
her head seemed bowed down by the weight of her dark hair, as she sat
gathered together, making herself small as a child will when
concentrating its mind to the statement of some serious purpose.

"I've knocked about a lot," she went on. "It's right you should know
that. And there's not very much left to tell me about a number of things
not usually set down in conversation books designed for _debutants_. But
just on that account I may be rather useful to you in some ways.--Don't
go and be offended now, there's a dear, good man," she added coaxingly.
"Because judging by what you told me the other day, there's no doubt
that, under some heads, you are very much of a _debutant_."

"I suppose I am," Iglesias said slowly. It was very strange to him to
find himself in so sudden and close an intimacy with this at once so wise
and so artificial woman creature. But he had his idea. Moreover,
increasingly he trusted her.

"Of course you are," she asserted. "That's just where the beauty of it
all comes in. You're the veriest infant. One has only to look into your
face to see that.--Don't go and freeze up now. You belong to another
order of doctrine and practice to that current in contemporary society."

Poppy gazed at the floor, still making herself small, the palms of her
hands pressed together between her knees.

"And that's just why you can be useful to me, awfully useful, if you
choose--I don't mean money, business, anything of the kind. I'm perfectly
competent to manage my own affairs, thank you. But you're good for me,
somehow. You rest me."

She began to rock herself gently backwards and forwards, but without
taking the heels of her shoes off the ground.

"Yes, you rest me, you rest me," she repeated.

"I am glad," Iglesias said. He felt soberly pleased, thankful almost.

Again Poppy glanced at him sideways.

"Yes, I believe you are," she said. "And that shows things have happened
to you--in you, more likely--since we last met. You have come on a great
piece."

"I doubt if I have come on, so much as gone back, to influences of long
ago," he answered; "to things which had been overlaid by the dust of my
working years almost to the point of obliteration."

"Was it pleasant to go back?" Poppy asked.

"Not at all. The going was painful. It required some courage to brush off
the dust."

"It usually does require courage--at least that's my experience--to brush
off the dust."

Dominic Iglesias made no immediate answer. He was a little startled at
his companion's acute reading of him, a little touched by her confidence.
Her words seemed to suggest the possibility of a relationship which
fitted in admirably with the development of his idea. He sat looking away
across the room, and, doing so, became aware that the said room possessed
unexpected characteristics, calculated to elucidate his impressions of
its owner's character. It was a man's room rather than a woman's,
innocent of furbelows and frills. Two low, wide settees, well furnished
with cushions and upholstered in dark yellowish-red tapestry, fitted into
the corners on either side the double doors. A couple of large armchairs
and a revolving book-table occupied the centre of the room. An upright
piano, in an ebonised case, draped across the back with an Indian
phulkari--discs of looking-glass set in coarsely worked yellow eyelet
holes forming the border of it--stood at right angles to the wall just
short of the bay window. In the window, placed slant-wise, was a carved
black oak writing-table, a long row of photographs stuck up against the
back shelf of it. The walls were hung with a set of William Nicolson's
prints, strong, dark, distinct, slightly sinister in effect; a fine
etching of Jean Francois Millet's _Gleaners_; and, in noticeable contrast
to this last, a mezzotint of Romney's picture of Lady Hamilton spinning.
Upon the book-table were a silver ash-tray and cigarette-box. The air was
unquestionably impregnated with the odour of tobacco, which the burning
of scent-sticks quite failed to dissemble.

While Mr. Iglesias thus noted the details of his surroundings, his
companion observed him, closely, intently. Suddenly she flung herself
back against the piled-up cushions.

"Let the dust lie, let it lie," she cried, almost shrilly. And as Dominic
turned to her, surprised at her vehemence, she added, "Yes, it's safest
so. Let it lie till it grows thick, carpeting all the surface, so that,
treading on it, one's footsteps are muffled, making no sound!"

Poppy jumped up, crossed swiftly to the writing-table, swept the long row
of photographs together and pushed them into a drawer.

"There you go, face downwards, every man Jack of you," she said. "And,
for all I care, there you may stay."

Then she turned round, confronting Dominic Iglesias, who had risen also,
her head carried high, her teeth set.

"You may not grasp the connection of ideas--I don't the very least see
how you should, and I've no extra special wish that you should. But you
must just take my word for it that's one way of thickening the dust, in
my particular case, and not half a bad way either!"

She pushed the heavy masses of her hair up from her forehead, crossed the
little room again and stood before Iglesias smiling, her hands clasped
behind her back.

"Yes, you rest me," she said, "you do, even more than I expected. I
wanted awfully to see you; and yet I was half afraid if I did we mightn't
pull the thing off. But we are going to pull it off, aren't we?"

This direct appeal demanded a direct answer; and Iglesias, looking down
at her, felt nerved to a certain steadiness of resolve.

"Yes, we are," he said gravely. "That, at least, is my purpose. I have
very few friends. I should value a new one." Then he added, with a
certain hesitancy, "I am glad you are not disappointed."

"Ah! you have come on--not a question about it," Poppy cried. "Sit down
again. You needn't go yet. And we are through with disturbances for this
afternoon anyhow. An anti-cyclone, as the weather reports put it, is
extending over all our coasts. I feel quite happy. Let me enjoy the anti-
cyclone while it lasts--and I'll give you your tea."

But of that tea Dominic Iglesias was fated not to drink. A ring at the
bell, a parley at the front door, followed by the advent of an elderly
parlourmaid bearing a card on a small lacquer tray.

"His lordship says if you're engaged he could wait a little, ma'am. But
he wants particularly to see you to-day."

Poppy took the card, glanced at it, and then at Dominic Iglesias.

"I'm afraid, I'm awfully afraid I shall have to let you go," she said.
She took both his hands, and holding them, without pressure but with a
great friendliness, went on: "Don't be offended, or you'll make me
miserable. But he's an old friend; and he's been a perfect brick to me--
stood by me through all my worst luck. I can't send him away. You won't
be off ended?"

"No," Iglesias said.

"And you will come again? You make me feel all smooth and good. You
promise you'll come?"

"Yes," Iglesias said.

In the narrow passage a tall, eminently well-dressed middle-aged
gentleman stood aside to let him pass. Dominic Iglesias received the
impression of a very handsome person, whose possible insolence of bearing
received agreeable modification, thanks to the expression of kindly
humorous eyes and a notably beautiful mouth.

Upon the centre table of the square first-floor sitting-room at Cedar
Lodge a note awaited Mr. Iglesias, addressed in George Lovegrove's neat
business hand.

"Dear old friend," it ran--"the wife asks you to take supper with us to-
morrow night. Step across as early as you like. My cousin, Miss Serena
Lovegrove, is paying us a visit. Yours faithfully, G. L.--N. B. Come as
you are: no ceremony. G. L."




CHAPTER XI


"Hullo, girlie," called the red and green parrot, as it helped itself up
the side of its zinc cage with beak as well as claws.

Serena Lovegrove had opened the door suddenly. Then, seeing that Mr.
Iglesias alone occupied the room, neither her host nor hostess being
present, she paused in the doorway, a large floppy yellow silk work-bag
in her hands, undecided whether to retreat or to proceed. And it was thus
that the bird, discovering her advent, announced it, while the pupils of
his hard, round yellowish grey eyes dilated and contracted--"snapped," as
Serena would have said--maliciously.

Serena was a tall, elegant, faded woman, dressed in black, her little
upright head balanced upon a long thin stalk of neck. Though undeniably
faded, there was, as now seen in the quiet evening light, a suggestion of
youthfulness about her. He brown eyes, pretty though rather small,
snapped even as did those of the parrot. Excitement--to-night she was
very much excited--invariably produced in Serena an effect of clutching
at her long-departed girlhood, an effect sufficiently pathetic in the
case of a woman well on in the forties. And it was precisely this
ineffectual throw-back to a Serena of seventeen or eighteen which lent a
sharp edge of irony to the strident salutations of the parrot, as it
called out again:

"Hullo, girlie! Polly's own pet girlie," then with a prolonged and ear-
piercing whistle:--"Hi, four-wheeler! girlie's going out." And hoarsely,
with a growl in its throat: "Move on there, stoopid, can't yer? Shut the
door."

During the delivery of these final admonitions Mr. Iglesias had
recognised the shadowy figure standing on the threshold and advanced.
This decided Serena. Still twisting the ribbons of the yellow work-bag
round her thin fingers, she drifted into the room.

"I think I have had the pleasure of meeting you once or twice before,
Miss Lovegrove," Dominic said. His manner was specially gentle and
courtly, for he could not but feel the poor lady was at a disadvantage,
owing to the very articulate indiscretions of the parrot.

"Oh! yes," Serena answered. "Certainly we have met. But you are wrong as
to the number of times. It is more than once or twice. Five times, I
think; or it may have been six. No, it is five, because I remember you
were expected, in the evening, the day before I went home the winter
before last; and at the last moment you were unable to come. That would
have made six. Now it is only five."

"You have an excellent memory," Iglesias said. "It is kind of you to
remember so clearly."

"I wonder if it is--I mean, I wonder whether it is kind," Serena
rejoined.

She was quite innocent of any intention of sarcasm. But her mind, like
those of so many unoccupied, and consequently self-occupied persons, was
addicted to speculation of a minor and vacuous sort. She was also liable
--as such persons often are--to mistake cavilling for spirit and wit--a
most tedious error!

"Still you are right in saying I have a good memory," she added. "People
generally observe that. But then I was always taught it was rude to
forget. Forgetfulness is the result of inattention. At school I never had
any difficulty in learning by heart."

"You must have found that both a useful and pleasant talent."

"Perhaps," Serena replied negligently. She was determined not to commit
herself, having arrived at the conclusion that Mr. Iglesias' address was
too civil. "It was bad manners of him not to remember how often we had
met," she said to herself, "and now he is trying to pass it off. But that
won't do!" Serena had many and distinct views on the subject of manner
and manners. She was never certain that civility did not argue a defect
of sincerity. She agreed with herself to think that over again later.
Meanwhile she would carefully remark Mr. Iglesias. "If he is insincere,
as I fear he is, he is sure to betray it in other ways. Then I shall be
on my guard." Forewarned is, of course, forarmed, and Serena felt very
acute. Though against exactly what she was taking such elaborate
precautions, it would have been difficult for her, or for anyone else, to
have stated. However, just now it was incumbent upon her to make
conversation. As is the way with persons not very fertile in ideas, she
had recourse to the simple expedient of asking a leading question.

"Are you fond of animals?" she inquired.

"I am afraid I have very little knowledge of animals," Iglesias replied.

Serena laughed dryly. This was so transparent a subterfuge.

"What a very odd answer!" she said. "Because everybody must really know
whether they like animals or not."

"I am afraid I stand by myself then, a solitary exception. I have had
little or nothing to do with animals, and have therefore had no
opportunity of discovering whether they attract me or not."

"How very odd!" Serena repeated.

She moved across to the centre-table where Mr. Lovegrove's books of
picture postcards, the miscellaneous consequences of many charity
bazaars, and kindred aesthetic treasures reposed, and deposited her work-
bag in their company. Her movement revived the attention of the parrot,
who had been nodding on its perch.

"Poor old girlie, take a brandy and soda? Kiss and be friends. Good-
night, all," it murmured hoarsely, half asleep.

"If your question bore reference to that particular animal, I stand in no
doubt as to my sentiments," Dominic remarked. "I am anything but fond of
it. I think it an odious bird."

"Ah! you see you do know," Serena exclaimed. "I was sure you did." She
felt justified in her suspicion of his sincerity. "But nobody would agree
with you, Mr. Iglesias, because of course it is really a very clever
parrot. They very seldom learn to say so many things."

"How fortunate!" Dominic permitted himself to ejaculate.

"I don't see why you should say it is fortunate."

"Do not its remarks strike you as somewhat impertinent and intrusive?"

"I wonder if an animal can be impertinent," Serena said reflectively.

But here to her vexation, for it appeared to her that she had just
started a really interesting subject of discussion, Mrs. Lovegrove
bustled into the room.

"Well, Mr. Iglesias," she began, "I am sure I am very delighted to see
you, and so will Georgie be. He was remarking only yesterday we don't
seem to see so much of you as we used to do. He's just a little behind
time, is Georgie, having been kept by the dear vicar at a meeting about
the Church Workers' Social Evenings Guild at the Mission Room in Little
Bethesda Street. You wouldn't know where that is, Mr. Iglesias--though I
can't help hoping you will some day--but Serena knows, don't you,
Serena? It's where Susan--her elder sister, Miss Lovegrove"--this aside
to Dominic--"gave an address once to the members of the Society for the
Conversion of the Jews."

"No doubt I remember; but Susan is always giving addresses somewhere,"
Serena said loftily.

"And very good and kind of her it is to give addresses," Mrs. Lovegrove
rejoined. "Even the dear vicar says what a remarkable gift she has as a
speaker, and there's no question as to the worth of his praise."

"I wonder if it is--I mean I wonder if it is good and kind of Susan to
give addresses," Serena remarked. "Because of course she enjoys giving
them. Susan likes to have a number of people listening to her."

"But if the object is a noble one?"--this from Mrs. Lovegrove, a little
nonplussed and put about.

"Still, if you enjoy doing anything, how can it be good and kind to do
it?" Serena said argumentatively. "Susan is very fond of publicity. I
think people very often deceive themselves about their own motives."

She looked meaningly at Dominic Iglesias as she spoke. And he looked back
at her gravely and kindly, though with a slightly amused smile. His
thoughts had travelled away--they had done so pretty frequently during
the last twenty-four hours--to the smirking self-conscious little house
on the verge of Barnes Common. Unpromising though it had appeared
outwardly, yet within it he believed he had found a friend--a friend who
was also an enigma. Perhaps, as he now reflected, all women are enigmas.
Certainly they are amazingly different. He thought of Poppy. He looked at
Serena. Yes, doubtless they all are enigmas; only--might Heaven forgive
him the discourtesy--all are not enigmas equally well worth finding out.

George Lovegrove arrived. Supper, a somewhat heavy and hybrid meal,
followed--"all comfortable and friendly," as Mrs. Lovegrove described it,
"no ceremony and fal-lals, but everything put down on the table so that
you could see it and please yourself."

Serena, however, was difficult to please. She picked daintily at the food
on her plate. Her host observed her with solicitude.

"Do take a little more," he said, in an anxious aside, Mrs. Lovegrove
being safely engaged in conversation with Mr. Iglesias, "or I shall begin
to be nervous lest we aren't offering you quite what you like."

But Serena was obdurate.

"Pray don't mind, George," she said. "You know I never eat much. I am
quite different from Susan, for instance. She always has a large
appetite, and so have all her friends. Low Church people always have, I
think. But I never care to eat a great deal, especially in hot weather."

Serena was really very glad indeed to come to London just now. Still,
there were self-respecting decencies to be observed, specially in the
presence of another guest. Relationship does not necessarily imply social
equality; and, as Serena reminded herself, the family always had felt
that poor George had married beneath him. Therefore it was well to keep
the fact of her own superior refinement well in view. In the case of good
George Lovegrove this was, however, a work of supererogation. For he had
a, to himself, positively embarrassing respect for Serena's gentility--
embarrassing because at moments it came painfully near endangering the
completeness of his consideration for "the wife's feelings." The two
ladies frequently differed upon matters of taste and etiquette, with the
result that the good man's guileless breast was torn by conflicting
emotions. For had not Serena's father been a General Officer of the
Indian army? And had not Serena herself and her elder sister Susan--a
person of definite views and commanding character--long been resident at
Slowby in Midlandshire, an inland watering-place of acknowledged fashion?
It followed that her pronouncements on social questions were necessarily
final. Yet to uphold her judgment, as against that of the wife, was to
risk mortifying the latter. And to mortify the wife would be to act as a
heartless scoundrel. Hence situations, for George Lovegrove, difficult to
the point of producing profuse perspiration.

That night Serena prepared for rest with remarkable deliberation. Clad in
a blue and white striped cotton dressing-gown, she sat long at her
toilet-table. And all the time she wondered--a far-reaching, mazelike,
elaborately intricate and wholly inconclusive wonder. Hers was a nature
which suffered perpetual solicitation from possible alternatives, hearing
warning voices from the vague, delusive regions of the might-be or might-
have-been. She had never grasped the rudimentary but very important truth
that only that which actually is in the least matters. And so to arrive
at what is, with all possible despatch--in so far as such arriving is
practicable--and then to go forward, comprises the whole duty of the sane
human being. Par from this, Serena's mind forever fitted batlike in the
half-darkness of innumerable small prejudices and ignorances. She moved,
as do so many women of her class, in a twilight, embryonic world,
untouched alike by the splendour and terror of living.

Nevertheless, on this particular occasion, as she brushed her hair and
inserted the tortoise-shell curling-pins which should secure to-morrow's
decorative effects, she felt almost daring and dangerous. She wondered
whether she had really enjoyed the evening or not; whether she had held
her own and shown independence and spirit. She laboured under the quaint
early-Victorian notion that, in the presence of members of the opposite
sex, a woman is called upon always to play something of a part. She
should advance, so to speak, and then retreat; provoke interest by a
studied indifference; yield a little, only to become more elegantly
fugitive. It may be doubted whether these wiles have even been a very
successful adjunct to feminine charms. But in the case of so negative and
colourless a creature as Serena, they were pathetically devoid of result.
Play a part industriously as she might, the majority of her audience was
wholly unaware that she was, in point of fact, playing anything at all!
They might think her a little capricious, a little foolish, but that
there was intention or purpose in her pallid flightiness passed the
bounds of imagination. Never mind, if the audience had no sense of the
position, Serena had, and she enjoyed it. Excitement possessed her, and
her eyes snapped even yet as, thinking it all over, she fastened the
curlers in her hair.

She wondered whether George and Rhoda--how intensely she disliked the
name Rhoda!--had any special reason for asking her just now, and talking
so much about Mr. Iglesias, or whether it was a coincidence.

"Of course it is not of the slightest importance to me whether they have
or not," she reflected. "I think it would be rather an impertinence if
they had. Still, I think I had better find out; but without letting Rhoda
suspect, of course. If you give her any encouragement Rhoda is inclined
to go too far and say what is rather indelicate. I always have thought
Rhoda had a rather vulgar mind. I wonder if poor George feels that? I
believe he does, before me. Once or twice to-night he was very nervous.
How dreadfully coarse poor Rhoda's skin is getting! I wonder if Rhoda has
given Susan a hint, and if that was what made Susan so gracious about my
leaving home? But I don't believe she did--I mean that Susan suspected
that George and Rhoda had any particular reason for inviting me. I wonder
if I shall ever make Susan see that I am not a cipher? Of course if
George and Rhoda really have any particular reason, and Susan comes to
know it, that will show her that other people do not consider me a
cipher. I wonder what most people would think of Mr. Iglesias? Of course
he has only been a bank clerk; but then so has George. Only then he is a
foreigner, and that makes a difference. I wonder whether, if anything
came of it, Susan would make his being a foreigner an objection?"

But this was growing altogether too definite and concrete. With a sort of
mental squeak Serena's thought flitted into twilight and embryonic
regions.

"I think if they have any particular reason, it is rather scheming of
George and Rhoda. I wonder if it is nice of them? If they have, I think
it is rather deceitful. I wonder if they have said anything to Mr.
Iglesias?"

Serena, with the aid of a curling-pin, was controlling the short fuzzy
little hairs just at the nape of her neck; and this last wonder proved so
absorbing a one that she remained, head bent and fingers aimlessly
fiddling with the bars of the curler, till it suddenly occurred to her
that she was getting quite stiff.

"If they have, I think it is very presuming of them," she continued
wrathfully, stretching her arms, for they ached--"very presuming. How
glad I am I was on my guard. I wonder if they saw I was on my guard? I
believe George did. I wonder if that helped to make him nervous?"

Serena fastened in the last of the curlers. There was no excuse for
sitting up any longer; yet she lingered.

"I must be more on my guard than ever," she said.

Meanwhile Dominic Iglesias, after sitting in the dining-room with his old
friend while the latter smoked a last pipe, made his way across the Green
in the deepening mystery of the summer night. The sky was moonless; and
at the zenith, untouched by the upward streaming light of the great city,
the stars showed fair and bright. A nostalgia of wide untenanted spaces,
of far horizons, of emotions at once intimate and rooted in things
eternal, was upon him. But of Serena Lovegrove, it must be admitted, he
thought not one little bit.




CHAPTER XII


Only one of the trees from which Cedar Lodge derives its name was still
standing. This lonely giant, sombre exile from Libanus, overshadowed all
that remained of the formerly extensive garden and sensibly darkened the
back of the house. Its foliage, spread like a deep pile carpet upon the
wide horizontal branches, was worn and sparse, showing small promise of
self-renewal. Yet though starved by the exhausted soil, and clogged by
soots from innumerable chimneys, it remained majestic, finely decorative
as some tree of metal, of age-old bronze roughened by a greenness of
deep-eating rust. From the first moment of his acquaintance with Cedar
Lodge it had been to Dominic Iglesias an object of attraction, even of
sympathy. For he recognised in it something stoical, an unmoved dignity
and lofty indifference to the sordid commonplace of its surroundings. It
made no concessions to adverse circumstances, but remained proudly
itself, owning for sole comrade the Wind--that most mysterious of all
created things, unseen, untamed, mateless, incalculable. The wind gave it
voice, gave it even a measure of mobility, as it swept through the
labyrinth of dry unfruitful branches and awoke a husky music telling of
far-distant times and places, making a shuddering and stirring as of the
resurgence of long-forgotten hope and passion.

When Dominic entered into residence at Cedar Lodge, a pair of stout
mauve-brown wood-pigeons--migrants from the pleasant elms of Holland
Park--had haunted the tree. But they being, for all their dolorous
cooings, birds of a lusty, not to say truculent, habit, grew weary of its
persistent solemnity of aspect. So, at least, Dominic judged. He had been
an interested spectator of the love-makings, quarrels, and
reconciliations of these comely neighbours from his bedroom window daily
while dressing. But one fine spring morning he saw them fly away and
never saw them fly back again. Clearly they had removed themselves to
less solemn quarters, leaving the great tree, save for fugitive
visitations from its comrade the wind, to solitary meditation within the
borders of its narrow prison-place.

Besides presenting in itself an object altogether majestical, the cedar
performed a practical office whereby it earned Iglesias' gratitude. For
its dark interposing bulk effectually shut off the view of an
aggressively new rawly red steam laundry, with shiny slate roofs and a
huge smoke-belching chimney to it, which, to the convulsive disgust of
the gentility of the eastern side of Trimmer's Green, had had the
unpardonable impertinence to get itself erected in an adjacent street. It
followed that when, one wet evening, yellow-headed little Mr. Farge had
advised himself to speak slightingly of the cedar tree, Iglesias was
prepared to defend it, if necessary, with some warmth.

The conversation had ranged round the subject of the hour, namely, the
possibility--as yet in the estimation of most persons an incredible one--
of war with the Boer Republics, when the young man indulged in a playful
aside addressed to Miss Hart, at whose right hand he was seated.

"If I could find fault with anything belonging to the lady at the head of
the table," he said, "it would be the gloomy old party looking in at
these back windows."

"What, the dear old cedar tree! Never, Mr. Farge!" protested Eliza.

"Yes, it would, though," he insisted, "when, as tonight, it is drip,
drip, dripping all over the shop. No touch of Sunny Jim about him, is
these now, Bert?"--this to the devoted Worthington sitting immediately
opposite to him on Miss Hart's left.

"Truly there is not, if I may venture so far," the other young gentleman
responded, playing up obediently. "And if anything could give me and
Charlie a fit of the blues, I believe that old fellow would in rainy
weather."

"Makes you think of the cemetery, does it not now, Bert?"

"You have hit it. Paddington--not the station though, Charlie, just
starting for a cosey little trip with your best girl up the river."

"For shame, Mr. Worthington," Eliza protested again, giggling.

"Suggestive of the end of all week-ends, in short," de Courcy Smyth, who
contrary to his custom was present at dinner that evening, put in
snarlingly. "One last trip up the River of Death for you, with a ticket
marked not transferrable, eh, Farge? Then an oblong hole in the reeking
blue clay, silence and worms."

His tone was spiteful to the point of commanding attention. A hush fell
on the company, broken only by the drifting sob of the rain through the
branches of the great cedar. Mr. Farge went perceptibly pale. Mrs.
Porcher sighed and turned her fine eyes up to the ceiling. Iglesias
looked curiously at the speaker. Eliza Hart was the first to find voice.

"Pray, Mr. Smyth," she said, "don't be so very unpleasant. You're enough
to give one the goose-skin all over."

"I am sorry I have offended," he answered sullenly. "But I beg leave to
call attention to the fact that I did not start this subject. I was
rather interested in the previous discussion, which gave an opportunity
of intelligent conversation not habitual among us. Farge is responsible
for the interruption, and for the cemeteries, and consequently for my
comment. Still, I am sorry I have offended."

He shifted his position, glancing uneasily first at his hostess, and then
at Dominic Iglesias, who sat opposite him in the place of honour at that
lady's right hand.

"You have not offended, Mr. Smyth," Mrs. Porcher declared graciously.
"And no doubt it is well for us all to be reminded of death and burial at
times. Though some of us hardly need reminding"--again she sighed. "We
carry the thought of them about with us always." And she turned her fine
eyes languidly upon Mr. Iglesias.

"My poor sweet Peachie," the kind-hearted Eliza murmured, under her
breath.

"But at meals, perhaps, a lighter vein is more suitable, Mr. Smyth," Mrs.
Porcher continued. "At table the thought of death does seem rather
disheartening, does it not? But about our poor old cedar tree now, Mr.
Farge? You were not seriously proposing to have it removed?"

"Well, strictly between ourselves, I am really half afraid I actually
was."

"You forget it sheltered my childhood. It is associated with all my
past."

"Can a rosebud have a past?" Farge cried, coming up to the surface again
with a bounce, so to speak.

Mrs. Porcher smiled, shook her head in graceful reproof, and turned once
more to Dominic.

"I think we should all like to know how you feel about it, Mr. Iglesias,"
she said. "Do you wish the poor old tree removed?"

"On the contrary, I should greatly regret it's being cut down," he
answered. "It would be a loss to me personally, for I have always taken a
pleasure both in the sound and the sight of it. But that is a minor
consideration."

"You must allow me to differ from that opinion," Mrs. Porcher remarked,
with gentle emphasis. "We can never forget, can we, Eliza, who is our
oldest guest? Mr. Iglesias' opinion must ever carry weight in all which
concerns Cedar Lodge."

Here Farge and Worthington made round eyes at one another, while de
Courcy Smyth shuffled his feet under the table. He had received a
disquieting impression.

"Oh! of course, Peachie, dear," Miss Hart responded. She hugged herself
with satisfaction. "The darling looks more bonny than ever," she
reflected. "To-night what animation! What tact! She seems to have come
out so lately, since that Serena Lovegrove has been stopping over the
way. Not that there could be any rivalry between her and that poor
thread-paper of a thing!"

Dominic Iglesias, however, received his hostess' pretty speeches with a
calm which turned the current of the ardent Eliza's thoughts, causing her
to refer, mentally, to the degree of emotion which might be predicated of
monuments, mountains, stone elephants, and kindred objects.

"You are very kind," he said. "But on grounds far more important than
those of any private sentiment the cutting down of the cedar calls for
careful consideration. I am afraid you would find it a serious loss to
the beauty of your property. What the house loses in light, it certainly
gains in distinction and interest from the presence of the tree."

"Yes," Mrs. Porcher returned, folding her plump pink hands upon the edge
of the table and looking down modestly. "It does speak of family
perhaps."

"And in your case, dear, it speaks nothing more than the truth," Eliza
declared. "Just as well a certain gentleman should reckon with Peachie's
real position," she said to herself--"specially with that stuck-up Serena
Lovegrove cat-and-mousing about on the other side of the Green. It does
not take a Solomon to see what she's after!"

"I am afraid the verdict is given against you, Mr. Farge. The cedar tree
will remain." Mrs. Porcher rose as she spoke.

The young man playfully rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, feigning
tears. Then a scrimmage ensued between him and Worthington as to which
should reach the dining-room door first and throw it open before the
ladies. At this exhibition of high spirits de Courcy Smyth groaned
audibly, while Mrs. Porcher, linking her arm within that of Miss Hart,
lingered.

"You will join our little circle in the drawing-room to-night, will you
not, Mr. Iglesias?" she pleaded.

Again the young men made round eyes at one another. De Courcy Smyth had
come forward. He stood close to Iglesias and, before the latter could
answer, spoke hurriedly:

"Can you give me ten minutes in private? I don't want to press myself
upon you, but this is imperative."

Iglesias proceeded to excuse himself to his hostess, thereby causing Miss
Hart to refer mentally to monuments and mountains once again.

"Thank you," Smyth gasped. His face was twitching and he swayed a little,
steadying himself with one hand on the corner of the dinner-table.

"I loathe asking," he continued, "I loathe pressing my society upon you,
since you do not seek it. It has taken days for me to make up my mind to
this; but it is necessary. And, after all, you made the original offer
yourself."

"I am quite ready to listen, and to renew any offer which I may have
made," Iglesias answered quietly.

"We can't talk here, though," Smyth said. "That blundering ass of a
waiter will be coming in directly; and whatever he overhears is sure to
go the round of the house. All servants are spies."

"We can go up to my sitting-room and talk there," Iglesias replied.

Yet he was conscious of making the proposal with reluctance, pity
struggling against repulsion. For not only was the man's appearance very
unkempt, but his manner and bearing were eloquent of a certain
desperation. Of anything approaching physical fear Dominic Iglesias was
happily incapable. But his sitting-room had always been a peaceful place,
refuge alike from the strain and monotony of his working life. It held
relics, moreover, wholly dear to him, and to introduce into it this
inharmonious and, in a sense, degraded presence savoured of desecration.
Therefore, not without foreboding, as of one who risks the sacrifice of
earnestly cherished security, he ushered his guest into the quiet room.

The gas, the small heart-shaped flames of which showed white against the
dying daylight coming in through the windows, was turned low in the
bracket-lamps on either side the high mantelpiece. Dominic Iglesias
moved across and drew down the blinds, catching sight as he did so--
between the tossing foliage of the balsam-poplars which glistened in the
driving wet--of the unwinking gaselier in the Lovegroves' dining-room, on
the other side of the Green. He remembered that he ought to have called
on Mrs. Lovegrove and Miss Serena, and that he had been guilty of a lapse
of etiquette in not having done so. But he reflected poor Miss Serena was
a person whose existence it seemed so curiously difficult to bear
actively in mind. Then he grew penitent, as having added discourtesy to
discourtesy in permitting himself this reflection. He came back from the
window, turned up the lights, drew forward an armchair and motioned Smyth
to be seated; fetched a cut-glass spirit decanter, tumblers, and a syphon
of soda from the sideboard and set them at his guest's elbow.

"Pray help yourself," he said. "And here, will you not smoke while we
talk?"

Smyth's pale, prominent eyes had followed these preparations for his
comfort with avidity, but now, the handsome character of his surroundings
being fully disclosed to him, he was filled with uncontrollable envy.
Silently he filled his glass, by no means stinting the amount of alcohol,
gulped down half the contents of the tumbler, paused a moment, leaning
his elbow on the table, and said:

"We were treated to a public exhibition of feminine cajolery in your
direction, Mr. Iglesias, at the end of dinner. It occurs to me we might
have been spared that. I have never had the honour of penetrating into
your apartments before; but the aspect of them is quite sufficient
indication as to who is the favoured member of Mrs. Porcher's
establishment."

Dominic had remained standing. Hospitality demanded that he should do all
in his power to secure his guest's material comfort; but there, in his
opinion, immediate obligation ceased. In thus remaining standing he had a
quaint sense of safeguarding the sanctities of the place. The man's tone
was curiously offensive. Involuntarily Mr. Iglesias' back stiffened a
little.

"I took these rooms unfurnished," he said. And then added: "May I ask
what your business with me may be?"

Smyth had recourse to his tumbler again. His hand shook so that his teeth
chattered against the edge of the glass.

"I am a fool," he said sullenly. "But my nerves are all to pieces. I
cannot control myself. I have come here to ask a favour of you, and yet
some devil prompts me to insult you. I hate you because I am driven to
make use of you. And this room, in its sober luxury, emphasises the
indignity of the position, offering as it does so glaring a contrast to
my own quarters--here under the same roof, only one flight of stairs
above--that I can hardly endure it. Life is hideously unjust. For what
have you done--you, a mere Canaanite, hewer of wood and drawer of water
to some grossly Philistine firm of city bankers--to deserve this immunity
from anxiety and distress; while I, with my superior culture, my ambition
and talents, am condemned to that beastly squeaking wire-wove mattress
upstairs, and a job-lot of furniture which some previous German waiter
has ejected in disgust from his bedroom in the basement? But there--I beg
your pardon. I ought to be accustomed to injustice. I have served a long
enough apprenticeship to it. Only--partly, thanks to you, I own that--I
have seemed to see the dawning of hope again--hope of success, hope of
recognition, hope of revenge; and just on that account it becomes
intolerable to run one's head against this paralysing, stultifying dead
wall of poverty and debt."--He bowed himself together, and his voice
broke.--"I owe Mrs. Porcher money for my miserable bedsitting-room and my
board, and I am so horribly afraid she will turn me out. The place is
detestable; unworthy of me--of course it is--but I am accustomed to it.
And I am not myself. I am terrified at the prospect of any change. In
short, I am worn out. And they see that, those beasts of editors. The
_Evening Dally Bulletin_ has given me my _conge_. I have lost the last of
my hack-work. It was miserable work, wholly beneath a man of my capacity;
still it brought me in a pittance. Now it is gone. Practically I am a
pauper, and I owe money in this house."

"I am sorry, very sorry," Iglesias said. "You should have spoken sooner.
I could not force myself into your confidence; but, believe me, I have
not been unmindful of my engagement. I have merely waited for you to
speak."

His manner was gentle, yet he remained standing, still possessed by an
instinct to thus safeguard the sanctities of the place. He paused, giving
the other man time to recover a measure of composure: then he asked
kindly, anxious to conduct the conversation into a happier channel:
"Meanwhile, how is the play advancing? Well, I hope--so that you find
solace and satisfaction in the prosecution of it."

Smyth moved uneasily, looking up furtively at his questioner.

"Oh! it is grand," he said, "unquestionable it is grand. You need have no
anxiety under that head. Pray understand that anything that you may do
for me in the interim, before the play is produced, is simply an
investment. You need not be in the least alarmed. You will see all your
money back--see it doubled, certainly doubled, probably trebled."

"I was not thinking of investments," Iglesias put in quietly.

"But I am," Smyth asserted. "Naturally I am. You do not suppose that I
should accept, still less ask, you help, unless I was certain that in the
end I should prove to be conferring, rather than incurring, a favour? You
humiliate me by assuming this attitude of disinterested generosity. Let
me warn you it does not ring true. Moreover, in assuming it you do not
treat me as an equal; and that I resent. It is mean to take advantage of
my sorrows and my poverty, and exalt yourself thus at my expense. Of
course I understand your point of view. From your associations and
occupations you must inevitably worship the god of wealth. One cannot
expect anything else from a business man. You gauge every one's
intellectual capacity by his power of making money. Well, wait then--
just wait; and when that play appears, see if I do not compel you to rate
my intellectual capacity very highly. For there are thousands in that
play, I tell you--tens of thousands. It is only in the interim that I am
reduced to this detestable position of dependence. I know the worth of my
work, if----"

But Iglesias' patience was beginning to wear rather thin. He interposed
calmly, yet with authority.

"Pardon me," he said, "but it is irrelevant to discuss my attitude of
mind or my past occupations. It will be more agreeable for us, both now
and in the future, to treat any matters that arise between us as
impersonally as possible. Therefore, I will ask you to tell me, simply
and clearly, how much you require to clear you from immediate difficulty;
and I will tell you, in return, whether I am in a position to meet your
wishes or not."

For a moment Smyth sat silent, his hands working nervously along the arms
of the chair.

"You understand it is merely a temporary accommodation?"

"Yes," Iglesias answered. "I understand. And consequently it is
superfluous to indulge in further discussion."

"You want to get rid of me," Smyth snarled. "Everyone wants to get rid of
me; I am unwelcome. The poor and unsuccessful always are so, I suppose.
But some day the tables will be turned--if I can only last."

And Dominic Iglesias found himself called upon to rally all his humanity,
all his faith in merciful dealing and the reward which goes along with
it. For it was hard to give, hard to befriend, so thankless and
ungracious a being. Yet, having put his hand to the plough, he refused to
look back. He had inherited a strain of fanaticism which took the form of
unswerving loyalty to his own word once given. So he spoke gravely and
kindly, as one speaks to the sick who are beyond the obligation of
showing courtesy for very suffering. And truly, as he reminded himself,
this man was grievously sick; not only physically from insufficient food,
but morally from disappointment and that most fruitful source of disease,
inordinate and unsatisfied vanity.

"I do not wish to get rid of you; I merely wish to take the shortest and
simplest way to relieve you of your more pressing anxieties, and so
enable you to give yourself unreservedly to your work. Want may be a
wholesome spur to effort at times; but it is difficult to suppose any
really sane and well-proportioned work of art can be produced without a
sense of security and of leisure."

"How do you come to know that? It is not your province," Smyth said
sharply.

Mr. Iglesias permitted himself to smile and raise his shoulders slightly.

"I come of a race which, in the past, has given evidence of no small
literary and artistic ability. The experience of former generations
affects the thought of their descendants, I imagine, and illuminates it,
even when these are not gifted individually with any executive talent."

For some minutes Smyth sat staring moodily in front of him. At last he
rose slowly from his chair.

"I am an ass," he said, "a jealous, suspicious, ungrateful ass. It is
more than ever hateful to me to ask a favour of you, just because you are
forbearing and generous. I wish to goodness I could do without you help;
but I can't. So let me have twenty-five pounds. Less would not be of use
to me. I should only have to draw on you again, and I do not care to do
that. Look here, can I have it in notes?"

"Yes," said Mr. Iglesias.

"I prefer it so. There might have been difficulties in cashing a cheque.
Moreover, it is unpleasant to me that your name, that any name, should
appear. It is only fair to save my self-respect as far as you can."

Then, as Dominic put the notes into his hand, he added, and his voice was
aggressive again and quarrelsome in tone: "I don't apologise. I don't
explain. I do not even thank you. Why should I, since I simply take it as
a temporary accommodation until my play is finished--my great play, which
is going--I swear before God it is going--not only to cancel this paltry
debt, but a far more important one, the debt I owe to my own genius, and
justify me once and forever in the eyes of the whole English-speaking
world."

With that he shambled out of the room, letting the handle of the door
slip so that it banged noisily behind him.

For a while Dominic Iglesias remained standing before the fireplace. He
was sad at heart. He had given generously, lavishly, out of proportion,
as most persons reckon charitable givings, to his means. But, though the
act was in itself good, he was sensible of no responsive warmth, no glow
of satisfaction. The transaction left him cold; left him, indeed, a prey
to disgust. Not only were the man's faults evident, but they were of so
unpleasant a nature as to neutralise all gladness in relieving his
distress. Mechanically Iglesias straightened the chair which his guest
had so lately occupied, put away tumbler and spirit decanter, pulled up
the blind and opened one of the tall narrow windows, set the door giving
access to his bed-chamber wide, and opened a window there, too, so
creating a draught right through the apartment from end to end. He
desired to clean it both of a physical and a moral atmosphere which were
displeasing to him. And, in so doing, he let in, not only the roar of
London, borne in a fierce crescendo on the breath of the wind, but a
strange multitudinous rustling from the sombre foliage and stiff branches
of the lonely cedar tree. Two limbs, crossing, sawed upon one another as
the wind took them, uttering at intervals a long-drawn complaint--not
weakly, but rather with virility, as of a strong man chained and groaning
against his fetters.

The sound affected Dominic Iglesias deeply, begetting in him an almost
hopeless sense of isolation. The vapid talk at dinner, poor little Mrs.
Porcher's misplaced advances--the fact of which it appeared to him
equally idle to deny and fatuous to admit--the dreary scene with his
unhappy fellow-lodger, the good deed done which just now appeared
fruitless--all these contributed to make the complaint of the exiled
cedar's tormented branches an echo of the complaint of his own heart. For
a long while he listened to these voices of the night, the great city,
the great tree, the wind and the wet; and listening, by degrees he
rallied his patience in that he humbled himself.

"After all, I have been little else but self-seeking," he said, half
aloud. "For I gave not to the man, but to myself. I clutched at a
personal reward, if not of spoken gratitude yet of subjective content. It
has not come. I suppose I did not deserve it."

And then, somehow, his thoughts turned to that other human creature who,
though in a very different fashion to de Courcy Smyth the unsavoury, had
claimed his help. He thought not of her over-red lips, but of her wise
eyes; not of her irrepressible effervescence and patter, but of her
serious moments and of the honesty and courage which at such moments
appeared to animate her. About a fortnight ago he had called at the
little flower-bedecked house on the confines of Barnes Common, but had
obtained no response to his ringing. He supposed she was engaged, or
possibly away. With a certain proud modesty he had abstained from
renewing his visit. But now, listening to the roar of London and the
complaint of the cedar tree, he turned to the thought of her as to
something of promise, of possible comfort, of equal friendship, in which
there should be not only help given, but help received.




CHAPTER XIII


Dominic Iglesias stood on Hammersmith Bridge looking upstream. The
temperature was low for the time of year, the sky packed with heavy-
bosomed indigo-grey clouds in the south and west, whence came a gusty
wind chill with impending rain. The light was diffused and cold, all
objects having a certain bareness of effect, deficient in shadow. The
weather had broken in the storm of the preceding night; and, though it
was but early September, summer was gone, autumn and the melancholy of
it already present--witness the elms in Chiswick Mall splotched with
raw umber and faded yellow. The tide had still about an hour to flow.
The river was dull and leaden, save where, near Chiswick Eyot, the
wind meeting the tide lashed the surface of it into mimic waves, the
crests of which, flung upward, showed against the gloomy stretch of
water beyond, like pale hands raised heavenward in despairing protest.
Steam-tugs, taking advantage of the tide, laboured up-stream in the
teeth of the wind, towing processions of dark floats and barges. Long
banners of smoke, ragged and fleeting, swept wildly away from the
mouths of the tall chimneys of Thorneycroft's Works, which rose black
into the low, wet sky. The roadway of the huge suspension bridge
quivered under the grind of the ceaseless traffic, while the wind
cried in the massive pea-green painted iron-gearing above. There was a
sense of hardly restrained tumult, of conflict between nature and the
multiple machinery of modern civilisation, the two in opposition,
alike victims of an angry mood. And Iglesias stood watching that
conflict among the crowd of children, and loafers, and decrepit, who
to-day--as every day--thronged the foot-way of the bridge.

Poppy St. John stood on the foot-way, too. She had crossed from the
southern side. But, though by no means insensible to the spirit or the
details of the scene around her, she was less engaged in watching the
drama of the stormy afternoon than in watching Dominic Iglesias--as
yet unconscious of her presence. His tall, spare, shapely figure,
grave, clean-shaven face, and calm, self-recollected manner--which
removed him so singularly from the purposeless neutral-tinted human
beings close about him--delighted her artistic sense.

"If one had caught him young," she said to herself, "if one had only
caught him young, heavenly powers, what a time one might have had, and
yet stayed good--oh! very quite good indeed!"

Then she made her way between much undeveloped and derelict humanity.

"Look at me, dear man," she said, "look at me--really I am worth it. I
got home late last night and I was possessed by a great longing to see
you.--Excuse my shouting, but things in general are making such an
infernal clatter.--I was determined to see you. I set my whole mind to
making you come. And I felt so sure you must come that this afternoon
I have journeyed thus far to meet you. And here you are, and here I
am."

Poppy stood before him bracing her back against the hand-rail of the
bridge.

"Tell me, are you glad?" she said.

And Dominic Iglesias, surprised, yet finding the incident curiously
natural, answered simply:

"Yes, I am, very glad."

"That's all right," she rejoined; "because, after all, coming was a
pretty lively act of faith on my part. I have superstitious turns at
times; and the weather, and things that had happened, had made me feel
pretty cheap somehow. I don't mind telling you as you are here that if
you'd failed me there would have been the devil to pay. I should have
been awfully cut up."

Iglesias still smiled upon her. Poppy presented herself under a new
aspect to-day, and that aspect found favour in his sight. She was no
longer the Lady of the Windswept Dust, arrayed in fantastic flowery
hat and trailing skirts, but was clothed in trim black workman-like
garments, which revealed the delicate contours of her figure and gave
her an unexpected air of distinction. Yet, though charmed, the caution
of pride--which, in his case, was also the caution of modesty--made
him a trifle shy in addressing her. He paused before speaking, and
then said, with a certain hesitancy:

"I fancy my attitude of mind last night was the complement of your
own. I, too, had fallen on rather evil days. I wanted to see you. I
came out this afternoon to find you. If I had failed to do so, it
would have gone a little hard with me, too, I think."

Poppy looked at him questioningly, intently, for a minute, her teeth
set. Then she whirled round, leaned her elbows on the hand-rail,
pulled her handkerchief out of the breast pocket of her smartly
fitting coat and dabbed her eyes with it, finely indifferent to
possible comment or observation.

Iglesias remained immediately behind her, but a little to the right,
so as to save her from being jostled by the passers-by. He had a sense
of being only the more alone with her because of the traffic and the
crowd; a sense, moreover, of dependence on her part and protection on
his; a sense, in a way, of her belonging to him and he to her. And
this was very sweet to him, solemnly sweet, as are all things of
beauty and moment holding in them the promise of enduring result. Old
Age ceased to threaten and Loneliness to haunt. Over Iglesias' soul
passed a wave of thankful content.

Suddenly Poppy straightened herself up and faced him. Her lips
laughed, but her eyes were wet.

"I'll play fair," she said; "by the honour of the mother that bore
you, I'll play fair."

Then she laid her hand on his arm and pointed London-wards.

"Now, come along, dear man, for I have got to pull myself together
somehow. Let us walk. Take me somewhere I've never been before,
somewhere quiet--only let us walk."

Therefore, desiring to meet her wishes, a little way up the broad
straggling street Dominic Iglesias turned off to the left into the
narrow old-world lanes and alleys which lie between the river frontage
and King Street West. The district is a singular one, suggestive of
some sleepy little dead-alive seaport town rather than of London.
Quaint water-ways, crossed by foot-bridges, burrow in between small
low cottages and warehouses. Some of these have overhanging upper
stories to them, are half-timbered or yellow-washed. Some are built
wholly of wood. There is an all-pervading odour of tar and hempen
rope. Small industries abound, though without any self-advertisement
of plate-glass shop fronts. Chimney-sweeps and cobblers give notice of
their presence by swinging signs. Newsvendors make irruption of
flaring boards upon the pavement. Little ground-floor windows exhibit
attenuated stores of tinware, string, and sweets. Modest tobacconists
mount the image of a black boy scantily clothed or of a Highlander in
the fullest of tartans above their doors. Cats prowl along walls and
sparrows rise in flights from off the ill-paved roadways. But of human
occupants there appear to be but few, and those with an unusual stamp
of individuality upon them; figures a trifle strange and obsolete--as
of persons by choice hidden away, voluntarily self-removed from the
levelling rush and grind of the monster city. The small heavy-browed
houses are very secretive, seeming to shelter fallen fortunes, obscure
and furtive sins, sorrows which resist alleviation and inquiry. Seen,
as to-day, under the low-hanging sky big with rain, in the diffused
afternoon light, the place and its inhabitants conveyed an impression
low-toned, yet distinct, finished in detail, rich though mournful in
effect as some eighteenth-century Dutch picture. A linnet twittered,
flitting from perch to perch of its cage at an open window. A boy,
clad in an old mouse-brown corduroy coat, passed slowly, crying "Sweet
lavender" shrilly yet in a plaintive cadence. Occasionally the siren
of a steam-tug tore the air with a long-drawn wavering scream.
Otherwise all was very silent.

And, as they threaded their way through the maze of crooked streets,
Dominic Iglesias and Poppy St. John were silent also; but with the
silence of intimacy and good faith, rather than with that of
embarrassment or indifference. Each was very fully aware of the
presence of the other. So fully aware, indeed, that, for the moment,
speech seemed superfluous as a vehicle for interchange of thought.
Then, as they emerged on to the open gravelled space of the Upper Mall
with its low red-brick wall and stately elm trees, Poppy held out her
hand to Mr. Iglesias.

"You are beautifully clever," she said. "You give me just what I
wanted. I'm as steady as old Time now. But what a queer rabbit-warren
of a place it is! How did you find your way?"

"I came here often, in the past," he said, "at a time when I was
suffering grave anxiety. I could not leave home, after my office work
was over, for more than an hour together. And in the dusk or at night,
with its twinkling and evasive lights, the place used to please me,
leading as it does to the river bank, the mystery of the ebbing and
flowing tide, the ceaseless effort seaward of the stream, and those
low-lying spaces on the Surrey side. It was the nearest bit of nature,
unharnessed, irresponsible nature, which I could get to; and it
symbolised emancipation from monotonous labour and everlasting bricks
and mortar. I could watch the dying of the sunset, and the outcoming
of the stars, the tossing of the pale willows--there on the eyot--in
the windy dusk, undisturbed. And so I have come to entertain a great
fondness for it, since it tranquillised me and helped me to see life
calmly and to bring myself in line with fact, to endure and to
forgive."

While he spoke Poppy's hand continued to rest passively in his.

"You are a poet," she said, "and you are very good."

Dominic Iglesias smiled and shook his head.

"No," he answered. "I am neither a poet nor am I very good. Far from
that. I only tried to keep faith with the one clear duty which I saw."

Poppy moved forward across the Mall and stood by the river wall,
looking out over the flowing tide. It was high now, and washed and
gurgled against the masonry.

"You did and suffered all that for some woman," she said. "A man like
you always breaks himself for some woman. I hope she was worth it--
often they aren't. Who was she? The woman you loved? Your wife?"

"The woman I loved," Iglesias answered, "but not my wife."

Poppy looked at him sharply, her eyes full of question and of fear, as
though she dreaded to hear very evil tidings.

"Not your mistress?" she said. "Don't tell me that. The Lord knows
I've no right to mind. But I should mind. It would be like switching
off all the lights. I couldn't stand it. So, if it's that, just let us
part company at once. I've no more use for you.--I know where I am
now. If I go up into St. Peter's Square I can pick up a hansom and
drive back home--I suppose I may as well call it home, as I have no
other. And as for you, if you've any mercy in you, never let me see
you again. Never come near me. I have no use for you, I tell you. So
leave me to my own devices--what those devices are is no earthly
concern of yours."

She paused breathless, her eyes blazing, her face very white. She
seemed to have grown tall, and there was a tremendous force in her of
bitterness, repudiation, and regret.

"After all," she cried, "I don't so much as know your name; and so,
thank heaven, it can't be so very difficult to forget you."

Her aspect moved Iglesias strangely, seeming as it did to embody the
very spirit of the angry sky, of the gloomy river, all the sorrow of
the dead summer and stormy autumn light. For a moment he watched her
in silence. Then he took both her hands in his and held them, smiling
at her again very gently.

"No, dear friend," he said, "the woman was not my mistress. She was my
mother." His voice shook a little. "I never talk of her. But I think
of her always. She was very perfect and very lovely. And she suffered
greatly, so greatly that it unhinged her reason. Now do you
understand? For years she was mad."




CHAPTER XIV


In the month of October immediately following two events took place
which, though of apparently very different magnitude and importance,
intimately and almost equally--as it proved in the sequel--affected
Dominic Iglesias' life. The first was the declaration of war by the
South African Republics. The second was the return of Miss Serena
Lovegrove to town.

Now war is, unquestionably, not a little staggering to the modern
civilised conscience; and this particular war possessed the additional
unpleasantness of having in it, at first sight, an element of the
grotesque. It is not too much to say that it struck the majority of
the British public as being of the nature of a very bad joke. For it
was as though a very small and very cheeky boy, after making offensive
signs, had spat in the nation's face. Clearly the boy deserved sharp
chastisement for his impudence. Nevertheless, the position remained an
undignified and slightly ridiculous one; and the British public
proceeded to safeguard its proper pride by treating the matter as
lightly as possible. It assured itself--and others--that, given a
reasonable parade of strength, the small boy, blubbering, his fists in
his eyes, would speedily and humbly beg pardon and promise to mind his
manners in future. A few persons, it is true, remembered Majuba Hill,
and doubted the small boy's immediate reduction to obedience. A few
others dared to suspect that English society was suffering from wealth
apoplexy and the many unlovely symptoms which, in all ages of history,
have accompanied that form of seizure, and to doubt whether blood-
letting might not prove salutary. Dominic Iglesias was among these.
His recent observations upon and excursions into the world of fashion,
stray words let drop by Poppy St. John on the one hand, and by unhappy
de Courcy Smyth on the other, had begotten in him the suspicion that
the sobering and sorrowful influences of war might be healthful for
the body politic, just as a surgical operation may be healthful for
the individual body. Next to the Jew, the Dutchman is the most
stubbornly tenacious of human creatures. He is a fighting man into the
bargain. Iglesias could not flatter himself that the campaign would
result in an easy walk-over for so much of the British army as a
supine and annoyed Government condescended to place in the field. The
whole affair lay heavy on his soul. It lay there all the heavier that
a few days subsequent to the declaration of war Mr. Iglesias' thought
was unexpectedly swept back into the arena of speculative finance.

In the portion of his morning paper allotted to business subjects, he
had lighted on a long and evidently inspired article dealing with the
flotation of a company just now in process of acquiring control over
extensive areas in Southeast Africa. The prospects held out to
investors were of the most golden sort. The land was declared to be
not only remarkably rich in precious stones and precious metals, but
also adapted for corn-growing on a vast scale--thus, both above and
below the surface, promising prodigious wealth were its resources
adequately developed.

Iglesias did not dispute the truth of these statements. The data
quoted appeared trustworthy enough. Moreover, he was already fairly
conversant with the enterprise, since Mr. Reginald Barking--that
junior member of the great banking firm whose name has been mentioned
in connection with strenuous modern business methods--was, to his
knowledge, deeply interested in the promotion of it. That which
troubled him, striking him as unsound and misleading, was the fact
that the profits, as set forth in the newspaper article, were
calculated--so at least it was evident to Iglesias--on the results of
such development when completed, irrespective of the lapse of time
required for such development; irrespective of possible and arresting
accident; irrespective, too, of immediate and even protracted loss by
the tying-up of huge sums of money which could yield but little or no
return until the said process of development was an accomplished fact.
To Iglesias' clear-seeing and logical mind the enterprise, therefore,
presented itself as one of those gigantic modern gambles of which the
incidental risks are emphatically too heavy, since they more often
than not make rich men poor, and poor men paupers, before they come
through--if, indeed, they even come through at all.

Reginald, in virtue of his youth, his energy, and relentless
concentration of purpose, had rapidly become the ruling spirit of the
house of Barking Brothers & Barking. Iglesias had no cause to love
him, since to him he owed his dismissal. But that fact failed to
colour his present meditations. Under the influence of his cherished
and new-found charity, Dominic had little time or inclination for
personal resentment. Too, the habits of the best part of a lifetime
cannot be thrown aside in a day. Directly he touched business on the
large scale, it became to him serious and imposing. And so the future
of the firm and the issue of its operations, in face of current
events, concerned him deeply, all the more that he gauged Reginald
Barking's temper of mind and proclivities.

The young man's father--now happily deceased--had offered an
instructive example of social and religious survival--survival, to be
explicit, of the once famous Clapham Sect, and that in its least
agreeable aspect. His theology was that of obstinately narrow
misinterpretation of the Scriptures; his piety that of self-invented
obligations; his virtue that of unsparing condemnation of the sins of
others. His domestic morality was Hebraic--death kindly playing into
his hands in regard of it. He married four times--Reginald, the only
child of his fourth marriage, having the further privilege of being
his only son. The boy was delicate and of a strumous habit. This fact,
combined with his parents' ingrained conviction that a public school
is synonymous, morally speaking, with a common sewer, caused his
education to be conducted at home by a series of tutors as
undistinguished by birth as by scholarship--tentative apologetic young
men, the goal of whose ambitions was a wife and a curacy, failing
which they resigned themselves to the post of usher in some ultra-
Protestant school. Sport in all its forms, art and literature, being
alike forbidden, the boy's hungry energy had found no reasonable
outlet. He had been miserable, peevish, ailing, until at barely
eighteen--after a discreditable episode with a scullery-maid--he had
been shipped off to New York to learn business in the house of certain
brokers and bill-discounters with whom Messrs. Barking Brothers had
extensive financial relations. Life in the land of the Puritans was
not, even at that time of day, inevitably immaculate. Freedom from
parental supervision and the American climate went to the lad's head.
He passed through a phase of commonplace but secret vice, emerging
there-from with an unblemished social reputation; a blank scepticism
in matters religious, combined with bitter animosity against the Deity
whom he declared non-existent; and a fiercely driving ambition, not so
much for wealth in itself, as for that control ever the destinies of
men, and even of nations, with which wealth under modern conditions
endows its possessor. He was a pale, dry, lizard-like young man,
suggesting light without heat, and excitement without emotion. Early
in his career he recognised that the great sources of wealth and power
lie with the younger countries, in the development of their natural
and industrial resources, of their railways and other forms of
transport. The phenomenal advance of America, for example, was due to
her enormous territory and the opportunities of expansion, with the
bounds of nationality, which this afforded her people. But he also
recognised that America was essentially for the Americans, and that it
was useless for an outsider, however skilful, however even
unscrupulous, to pit his business capacity against that of the native
born. His dreams of power and speculative activity directed
themselves, consequently, to the British Colonies, and to those as yet
unappropriated spaces of the earth's surface where British influence
is still only tentatively present.

Meanwhile he had espoused Miss Nancy Van Reenan, daughter of a famous
transatlantic merchant prince, first cousin, it may be added, to the
beautiful Virginia Van Reenan whose marriage with Lawrence Rivers, of
Stoke Rivers in the county of Sussex, so fluttered the smartest
section of New York society a few years ago. He returned to England in
the spring of 1897, convinced that America had taught him,
commercially speaking, all there was to know. This knowledge he
prepared to apply to waking up the venerable establishment in
Threadneedle Street, while employing the unimpeachable respectability
and solvency of the said establishment as a lever towards the
realisation of his own far-reaching ambitions. He brought with him
from the United States, in addition to his elegant wife, two dry, pale
children, whose contours were less Raphaelesque than gnat-like, and
the acuteness of whose critical faculty was very much more in evidence
than that of their affections. These bright little results of
modernity and applied science--in the shape of the incubator--took
their place in the social movement, at the ages of three and five
respectively, with the hard and chilling assurance of a world-weary
man and woman. They never exhibited surprise. They rarely exhibited
amusement. They were radically disillusioned. They frequently referred
to their nerves and their digestions, in the interests of which they
consistently repudiated every form of excess.

With these rather terrible little gentry Dominic Iglesias was, happily
for himself, unacquainted; but with their father he was very well
acquainted, as has already been stated. Hence his fears. Folding his
newspaper together, he laid it on the table and proceeded to walk
meditatively up and down his sitting-room. The morning was keen with
sunshine, the leaves of the planes and balsam-poplars fell in brown
and yellow showers upon the Green, on the further side of which the
details of the red and yellowish grey houses stood out in high relief
of sharp-edged light and shadow. Mr. Iglesias had risen in a hopeful
frame of mind. Of late it had become his habit to call weekly on Poppy
St. John. Today was the one appointed for his visit. Since he had
spoken to her about his mother his friendship with Poppy St. John had
entered upon a new phase. It was no longer experimental, but absolute,
the more so that she had in no way presumed upon his confidence. He
felt very safe with her--safe to tell or safe to withhold as
inclination should move him. And in this there was a strange and
delicate lessening of the burden of his loneliness, without any
encroachment on his pride. He had found, moreover, that behind her
patter lay an unexpected acquaintance with public affairs and the
tendencies of current events, so that it was possible to talk on
subjects other than personal with her. He was coming to have much
faith in her judgment as well as in her sincerity of heart. And, so,
with the prospect of seeing her before him, Dominic had risen in the
happiest disposition, had so remained till the newspaper article
disturbed his mind. For what, as he asked himself, did it portend,
this extravagant puff of the company's lad and the company's
prospects, at this particular juncture? Why was it so urgently and
eloquently forced upon the market just now? Was it but another proof
of the contemptuous attitude adopted by Englishmen of all classes
towards the Boer Republics? Or did it take its origin very much
elsewhere--namely, in the fact that Reginald Barking had so deeply
involved the capital and pledged the credit of the firm that it became
necessary to make violent and doubtfully honest bid for popular
support before the position of the said firm, through difficulty and
accident induced by war, became desperate?

This last solution of the perplexing question aroused all Mr.
Iglesias' loyalty towards his old employers. He saw before them the
ugly possibility of failure and disgrace. The mere phantom of the
thing hurt him as unseemly, as a shame and dishonour to those who in
their corporate capacity had benefited him, and therefore as a shame
and dishonour, at least indirectly, to himself. The thought agitated
him. He needed to take council with someone; and so, pushed by a
necessity of immediate action uncommon to him, he laid hands on hat
and coat and set forth to talk matters over with his old friend and
former colleague, George Lovegrove.

Out of doors the air was stimulating. The voice of London had a tone
of urgency in it, as the voice of the young and strong who court the
coming of stirring events.

"The moods of the monstrous mother are inexhaustible," Iglesias said
to himself. "She is changeful as the great ocean. To-day she is
virile, and shouts for battle--. well, it may be she will get her fill
of that before many months are out!"

Then the thought of his afternoon visit returned upon him. If the air
would remain as exhilarating, the sunshine as daring as now, these
would heighten enjoyment.

Mr. Iglesias smiled to himself, an emotion of tenderness mingling with
his anxiety. He felt very much alive, very ready to meet any demand
which the future might make on him--battle for him, too, perhaps, and
at this moment he welcomed the thought of it! Thus, a little exalted
in spirit, Dominic walked on rapidly across the Green between the iron
railings, conscious of colour, of light, and of sound; but unobservant
of the details of his immediate surroundings, until a drifting female
figure barred his path, undulating uncertainly before him. He moved to
the right to let it pass. It moved to the right also. He moved to the
left, it did so, too.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

"Oh!" cried Serena Lovegrove.

"I beg your pardon," Iglesias repeated, raising his hat. "Excuse me, I
did not see who it was."

"How very odd!" Serena remarked. She stood still in the middle of the
path. Her eyes snapped. Her silk petticoat rustled. Serena was very
particular about her petticoats. It gave her great moral and social
support to hear them rustle. "How very odd!" she said again. "Did you
not know that I had come back?"

Dominic might truthfully have replied that he did not know that she
had ever gone away; but he abstained.

"It must be a great pleasure to your cousins to have you with them,"
he said courteously.

Serena looked at the falling leaves.

"I wonder whether it is--I mean I wonder whether it is a pleasure to
them, or whether they ask me out of a sense of duty." She paused,
gazing at Mr. Iglesias. "Of course, I know George has a strong regard
for me, and for Susan. It is only natural, as we are first cousins.
But I am not sure about Rhoda. Of course we never heard of Rhoda until
she married George."

"She has made him an excellent wife," Iglesias put in.

"I suppose she has," Serena said reflectively. "But I sometimes wonder
whether, if George had married somebody else, it might not have been
more satisfactory in some ways."

Serena felt very proud in making this remark. It elicited no reply,
however, from Mr. Iglesias.

"I wonder if he really sees that Rhoda is on a different level from
us, and won't admit it; or whether he doesn't see. If he doesn't see,
of course that means a good deal."

"Do you usually go out walking in the morning?" Dominic inquired. The
silence was becoming protracted. Courtesy demanded that he should
break it.

Serena looked at him with heightened intelligence.

"We were always brought up to take a walk twice a day. Mamma was very
particular about it. She believed that health had so much to do with
regular exercise. Sometimes I wonder whether she did not carry that
too far. But, of course, Susan is very strong, much stronger than I
am. I believe she would have been strong in any case, even if mamma
had not insisted on our taking so much exercise." Serena paused. "But
I did not know you went out in the morning. That is, I mean I have
never seen you go out before."

"Indeed," Iglesias exclaimed, a little startled at the close
observation of his habits implied by this remark.

"No," she said; "of course one can see Cedar Lodge very plainly from
George's house, and I often look out of window. I think it among the
pleasures of London to look out of window. I have never seen you go
out in the morning before." Again she paused, adding reflectively: "It
really seems rather odd that neither George nor Rhoda should have told
you that I had come back."

To this remark no suitable answer suggested itself. Moreover, Mr.
Iglesias was growing slightly impatient. He wished she would see fit
to move aside and let him pass.

"You will get cold standing here," he said. "You must not let me
detain you any longer."

Serena's eyes snapped. She was excited. She was also slightly
offended. "He is very abrupt," she said to herself; but she did not
move aside and let him pass. "Yes, he is abrupt," she repeated;
"still, he has a very good manner. If one didn't know that he had been
a bank clerk, I wonder if one would detect it. I don't think it would
be a thing that need be mentioned, for instance, at Slowby. Only Susan
would be sure to make a point of mentioning it. Susan has an idea she
owes it to herself to be truthful. Of course, it would be wrong to
deny that anyone had been a bank clerk; but that is different from
telling everybody. I wonder if Susan would feel obliged to tell
everybody."

When she reached the near side of the Green, Serena looked back. Mr.
Iglesias was in the act of entering the Lovegroves' front door, which
the worthy George held open for him. Serena stood transfixed.

"So he was going there!" she said to herself. "How extraordinary not
to mention it to me. What could have been his object in not mentioning
it? I wonder if he has only gone to see George, or to see Rhoda as
well. If he has gone to see Rhoda, then I think he has been
exceedingly rude to me. And he has been very short-sighted, too, if he
didn't want me to know, for he might have taken it for granted that of
course I should look back. Unless he did do it on purpose, meaning to
be rude. But--"

Serena resumed her walk. She was very much excited.

"Of course he may have done it on purpose that I should see, and
understand that he meant something special--that he was going to speak
to George and Rhoda about something in particular, which he could not
say before me. He may have wanted to sound them. But then it is so
very odd that he should have said that George had never told him I had
come back. But I don't believe he ever did say that." Serena was
growing more and more excited. She drifted along the pavement, in her
rustling petticoats, with the most unusually animated expression of
countenance.

"I remember--of course he did not say it. He avoided the question each
time. How very extraordinary! I think he must mean me to understand
something by that. I wonder if George will refer to it at luncheon. If
he does I must find out from Rhoda, but without letting her suspect
that I observed anything, of course."

Serena had quite ceased to be offended. Her fancy, indeed, had taken a
most wildly ingenious flight. She felt very remarkable, very acute,
quite dangerous, in short--and these sensations, however limited their
justification by fact, were highly agreeable to her.




CHAPTER XV


The heavens remained clear, the air exhilarating, and Iglesias set
forth on his weekly pilgrimage in a serene frame of mind. George
Lovegrove's view had been reassuring.

"I know you are much more far-sighted than I am," he had said, his
honest face beaming with combined cleanliness and affection, "so I
always hesitate to set up my opinion against yours. It would be
presumptuous. Still, you do surprise me. I never had an inkling of
anything of the sort; and between ourselves--for I should never hint
at the subject before the wife, you know--it might upset her, females
are so sensitive--but between ourselves it would fairly unman me to
think there could be any unsoundness in Barking Brothers & Barking.
You know the phrase current in the city about them--'as safe as the
Bank of England'? And I have always believed that. I know I left
before Mr. Reginald had any active share in the business, and I never
have cared about American speculation. It is all beyond me. Still I
cannot suppose the senior partners would let him have too much his own
way. Depend upon it, Sir Abel keeps an eye on him. And then as to this
war, of course you have studied it all more deeply than I have the
power to do; still I cannot help thinking you distress yourself
unnecessarily. As I said to the wife when I first heard of it, it's
suicidal. One can only feel pity for such poor ignorant creatures,
rushing headlong on their ruin. Depend upon it, they will very soon
come to their senses and deplore their own rash action. A very few
weeks will see the finish of it all. I only hope there will not be
much bloodshed first, for of course they couldn't stand up against
English troops for an hour, poor things."

Encouraged by which cheerful optimism Dominic Iglesias began to think
his fears exaggerated, as he descended from an omnibus top at
Hammersmith Bridge that afternoon, crossed the river, and walked on
down the long suburban road. The sky was sharply blue. Multicoloured
leaves danced down from the trees in the villa gardens. Gaily clad
children, pursued by anxious mothers and nursemaids, ran and shouted,
the sunshine and fresh air having gone to their heads. Perched on the
brick pier of an entrance gate, a robin uplifted its voice in
piercingly sweet song. Autumn wore her fairest face, speaking of
promise rather than of decay. It was good to be alive. Even to Mr.
Iglesias' sober and chastened spirit horror of war, disgrace of
financial failure, seemed remote and inconsiderable things, morbid
delusions such as sane men brush aside scorning to give them
harbourage so much as of thought.

Poppy was mirthful, too, in her greeting of him.

"My dear man," she cried, "the house is out of windows! You find us in
the throes of a great domestic event. Cappadocia has done her duty by
posterity. She has been brought to bed, if you'll excuse my mentioning
it, of four puppies. Perfect little lambs, not a white hair among
them. And she shows true maternal feeling, does Cappadocia. Whenever
you go near her she tries to bite."

Poppy spoke very fast, holding his hand, looking him full in the face,
her singular eyes very gentle in expression, yet all alight.

"Ah! it's good to see you. My stars, but it is good to see you," she
said.

And Dominic, moved beyond his wont, stood silent for a space.

"You're not offended? Surely, at this time of the day, you're not
going to stiffen up?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"No, no, dear friend," he said; "but this greeting is a little
wonderful to me. Except my mother, years ago, nobody has ever cared
whether I came or went."

"More fools they," Poppy answered, with a fine disregard of grammar.
"But all that's over now. You know it's over. All the same I can't be
altogether sorry it was so, because it gives me my chance.--Sit down;
I'll expound to you. Let us talk.--You see, my beautiful innocent,
with most men worth knowing--I am not talking about boys running about
with the shell still on their heads and more affections to place than
they can find a market for, but men. Well then, with most all of them,
when one comes to discuss matters, one finds one's had such an awful
lot of predecessors. At best one comes in a bad third--more often a
bad three-and-twentieth--I mean nothing risky. Don't be nervous. But
they have romantic memories of half-a-dozen women. And so, though they
are no end nice and kind to one, play up and give one a good time and
have a jolly good one themselves--trust 'em to take care of that--one
knows all the while, if one knows anything, that the whole show's
merely a _rechauffe_. Visions of Clara and Gladys, and dear
little Emily, and Rosina, and Beatrice, and the lovely Lucinda--
angels, every one of them, if you haven't seen them for ten years, and
wouldn't know them again if you met them in the street--haunt the
background of every man's mind by the time he's five-and-thirty, and
cut entrancing capers against the sky-line, so that--when one comes to
thrash the matter out--one finds the actually present woman, here in
the foreground, hasn't really any look-in at all."

Poppy threw her head back against the yellowish red cushions of the
settee, her teeth showing white as she laughed.

"Boys aren't worth having. They're too crude, too callow. Moreover, it
isn't playing the game. One doesn't want to make a mess of their
futures, poor little chaps. And grown men, except as I say of the very
preengaged sort, are not to be had. So don't you understand, most
delightful lunatic, how it comes to pass that you and your friendship
are precious to me beyond words? When you go I could cry. When you
come I could dance."

Her tone changed, becoming defiant, almost fierce.

"And it is all right," she said, "thank heaven, right,--right, clean,
and honest, and good for one's soul. Now I've done. Only we are very
happy in our own quaint way, aren't we? And we can leave it at that.
Oh, yes, we can very well leave it at that if"--she looked sideways at
Mr. Iglesias, her expression half-humorous, half-pathetic--"if only it
will stay at that and not play the mischief and scuttle off into
something quite else."

She got up quickly, with a little air of daring and bravado.

"I must move about. I must do something--there, I'll make up the fire.
No, sit still, dear man"--as Dominic prepared to rise also--"I like
doing little odd jobs with you here. It takes off the company feeling,
and makes it seem as if you belonged, and like the bicycle, had 'come
to stay.'"

Poppy threw a couple of driftwood logs upon the smouldering fire.
Around them sharp tongues of flame--rose and saffron, amber, sea-
green, and heliotrope, glories as of a tropic sunset--leaped upward.
She stood watching these, her left hand resting on the edge of the
mantelpiece, her right holding up the front of her black skirt. Her
right foot rested on the fender curb, thereby displaying a discreet
interval of openwork silk stocking and a neatly cut steel-buckled
shoe. The many-hued firelight flickered over her dark figure; over the
soft lace jabot at her throat and ruffles at her wrists; over her pale
profile; and glinted in the heavy masses of her hair. The room, facing
east, was cold with shadow, which the thin fantastic colours of the
flames appeared to emphasise rather than to relieve. And Iglesias,
obedient to her entreaty, sat quietly waiting until it should again
please her to speak. For he had begun to accept her many changes of
mood as an integral element of her personality--a personality rich in
rapid and subtle contradictions. Often he had no clue to the meaning
of these many changes. But he did not mind that. Not absence of vulgar
curiosity alone, but an unwilling sub-conscious shrinking from any too
close acquaintance with the details of her life contributed to render
him passive. He had a conviction, though he had never formulated it
even in thought, that ignorance in relation to her made for security
and content. And there was a refined charm in this--namely, that each
to the other, even while friendship deepened, should remain something
of an undiscovered country. Moreover, had she not told him that he
rested her? To ask questions, however sympathetic, to volunteer
consolation, however delicately worded, is to risk being officious;
and to be officious, in however mild a degree, is to drive away the
shy and illusive spirit of rest. And so Dominic Iglesias was coming,
in the good nautical reading of that phrase, simply "to stand by" and
wait where this woman was concerned. After all, it was but the
reapplication of a lesson learned long ago for the support and solace
of another woman, by him supremely loved. To act thus was, therefore,
not only natural but poignantly sweet to him, as a new and gentle
offering laid upon the dear altar of his dead. It rejoiced him to find
that now, as of old, the demand created a supply of silent but
sustaining moral force, ready to pass into the sphere of active help
should necessity arise.

Nevertheless as the minutes passed, while daylight and firelight alike
began to fade, Dominic Iglesias grew somewhat troubled and sad. And it
was with a distinct movement of relief that he, at last, saw Poppy
draw herself up, push the soft masses of her hair back from her
forehead with a petulant gesture, and turn towards him. As she did so
she let her hands drop at her sides, as though she had finished with
and dismissed some unwelcome form of thought, while her face showed
wan, and her eyes large and vague, as though they saw beyond and
through all that which they actually looked on.

"There, there," she said harshly, with an angry lift of her head,
"what a silly fool I am, wasting time like this when you are here. But
my soul went out of my body; and I could afford to let it go, just
because you were here, and I felt safe." Her tone softened. "Sure I
don't bore you?" she asked.

Dominic shook his head, smiling.

"Very sure," he said.

"Bless you, then that's all right." Poppy strolled back and sat down
languidly. "I've gone confoundedly tired," she said. "You see, I sat
up half the night acting Gamp to Cappadocia--if you excuse my again
alluding to the domestic event.--Oh! my being tired doesn't matter. My
dear man, I'm never ill. I'm as strong as a horse. Let's talk of
something more interesting--let's review the topics of the hour--only
for the life of me I can't remember what the topics of the hour are!
Yes, I know though--the management of the Twentieth Century Theatre
has given Dot Parris a leading part. Does that leave you cold?
Impossible! Why, in theatrical circles it's a world-shaking event. I
own I'm curious to see how she does in legitimate drama, after her
career in musical comedy and at the halls, myself. I'm really very
fond of her, poor little Dot. She's going to call herself Miss
Charlotte Colthurst in the future, I understand. Did you ever hear
such cheek? But then she always had the cheek of the old gentleman
himself, and that makes for success. Cheek does go an awfully long way
towards bringing you through, don't you think so?"

"Probably," Dominic said. "My opportunities of exercising that
particular form of virtue have been so limited that I am quite
prepared to accept your ruling on the point."

Poppy laughed softly, looking at him with a great friendliness.

"Ah! but it wouldn't have been cheek in your case, anyhow. It would
merely have been that you stepped into your right place, ascended any
throne that happened to be right divine. I can see you doing it, so
statelily and yet so innocently. It would be a perfectly delicious
sight. I believe you will do it yet, some day, somehow, and make a lot
of people sit up. But that reminds me, joking apart, there is a topic
of the hour I wanted to ask you about. Tell me what you think of this
war."

And Dominic Iglesias, once more obedient to her changing mood, replied
with quiet sincerity:

"I am told I am an alarmist. I hope I may prove to be so, for in this
matter I should much prefer the optimists to be in the right. But I
confess I do not like the outlook. Both on public and private grounds
this war makes me anxious."

Poppy's languor had vanished. She had grown very much alive again. Now
she leaned forward, pressing her hands together, palm to palm, between
her knees, and making herself small, as a child does when it is deeply
in earnest and wants to think.

"You're right," she assented. "I'm perfectly certain all this cocksure
Johnny-head-in-air business, 'sail to-day and see you again at tea
tomorrow, so it's not worth while saying good-by'--you know the
style?--is fatuous and idiotic. It is not bluff, because the English
officer-man doesn't bluff. He hasn't the brains, to begin with, and
then he is a very sound sort of an animal. He doesn't need to hide his
fright for the simple reason that he's not frightened. A friend of
mine was talking about it all yesterday. He thinks as you do, and he's
no silly, though he is a member of the House of Lords.--After all, he
can't help that, poor dear old chap," she added apologetically,
looking sideways at Mr. Iglesias. "But there, you've seen him, I
believe. You met him the first time you came here. Don't you remember,
I had to turn you out because I had to see him on business, and you
ran across him in the hall as you were going?"

"I remember meeting someone," Dominic said, rather loftily. He did not
want to hear any more. The conversation had become displeasing to him,
though he could have given no reason for his displeasure. But Poppy
suddenly turned mischievous and naughty. She patted her hands gently
together between her knees and swayed with rather impish merriment.

"Ah, of course you were much too grand to take any particular notice
of him, poor brute. But he wasn't a bit too grand to take a lot of
notice of you. He was fearfully impressed. Yes, I tell you he was.
Don't be cross. I am speaking the veracious truth. I give you my word
I'm not gassing. He was awfully keen to know who you were, and where
you came from, and how I met you. And it was the sweetest thing out to
be able to reply that I'd been introduced to you on a bench--a mighty
uncomfortable one, too, with no back to it!--on Barnes Common by
Cappadocia; and that as to your name and local habitation I hadn't the
faintest ghost of a notion what they were. Are you cross? Don't be
cross," Poppy pleaded.

"No, no, of course not," Mr. Iglesias answered, goaded from his
habitual calm and speaking almost sharply.

Poppy patted her palms together again, swaying backwards and forwards.
Her eyes were dancing.

"Oh! but you are, though," she cried. "You're just a wee bit jealous.
You are--you know you are, and I'm not a scrap sorry. On the contrary,
I'm enchanted. For it shows that you are human after all, and must
have a name and address tucked away somewhere about you. I don't want
to know what they are, but it's comfortable to be assured of their
existence. It shows you don't drop straight down from heaven--as I was
beginning to be afraid you did--once a week, into the Mortlake Road,
and then go straight up again. It shows that I could get on to you by
post, or telephone, or other means of communication common to mortals,
if I was in a tight place and really wanted you, without walking as
far as Hammersmith Bridge and waiting in the wind and the wet on the
bare chance you might take it into your august head to materialise,
and break out of paradise, and take a little stroll round our
sublunary sphere."

For a moment Poppy laid her hand lightly on Mr. Iglesias' shoulder.

"Yes, be cross," she repeated. "Just as cross as ever you like, so
long as you don't keep it up too protractedly. It's the most engaging
piece of flattery I've come across for a month of Sundays. Only you
needn't worry in this particular instance, dear man, I give you my
word you needn't. It's a sheer waste of feeling. For Fallowfeild's
always been perfectly decent with me. I know people think him an
awfully risky lot, but they're noodles. He's racketed in his day--of
course he has. But if he'd been more of a hypocrite, people would have
talked less. As the man says in the play, it's not the sin but the
being found out which makes the scandal. And Fallowfeild was too
honest. He never pretended to be better than he was. He is a man of
good nature who has done wrong things, which is quite different to
being a man of bad nature who does wrong things, and still more
different to being a man of weak nature who pretends to do right
things. That last is the sort I hate most, and I speak out of beastly
intimate experience."

She made a most expressive grimace, as though she had a remarkably
disagreeable taste in her mouth.

"No salvation for that sort, I believe," she went on, "either here or
hereafter. Now, are you better? You do believe it has always been
perfectly square and above-board between Fallowfeild and me, don't
you?"

"Unquestionably, I believe it," Dominic answered. He spoke slowly.

Poppy turned her head sharply and looked hard at him.

"Ah! but I don't quite like that," she said. "I've muddled it somehow
--I see I have. I've hurt and offended you. You're farther off than
you were ten minutes ago. In spirit you've got up and gone away. I
have muddled it. I have made you distrust me."

"No," Dominic answered, "you have not made me distrust you; but you
have perplexed me. It is the result of my own dulness, no doubt. My
imagination is not agile enough to follow you, and so--"

He hesitated. That which he had in his mind was not easy to put into
words without discourtesy. He would far rather have left it unsaid;
but to do so would have been, in truth, to stand farther off, to erect
a barrier which might prove insuperable to happy companionship in the
future.

"Yes?" Poppy queried. Her voice shook just perceptibly. In the
deepening dusk neither could see the other distinctly, and this
contributed to Dominic's decision to speak.

"It pains me," he said at last, "if you will pardon my frankness, that
you should think it necessary to account for yourself and justify
yourself as you often appear to do."

"Yes?" Poppy queried again.

"That you should do so distresses and disturbs me."

"Yes," Poppy murmured.

"I am afraid I grow selfish," Iglesias went on gently; "but you have
been good enough to tell me that my poor friendship is of value to
you. Does it not occur to you that yours is of far greater value to
me? And that for many and obvious reasons--these among others, that
while you are young, and have a wide circle of acquaintances, and in a
future to which, brilliant as you are, you may look forward with hope
and assurance, I am absolutely alone in the world. Save for one old
school-fellow, who has been very faithful to me, there is no one to
whom it matters, except in the most superficial degree, whether I live
or die."

"Ah!" Poppy said softly.

"Do not misunderstand me, I do not complain," Iglesias added. "I
entertain no doubt but that the circumstances in which I find myself
are the right and profitable ones for me, if I only lay to heart the
lessons they teach, and use the opportunities which they afford me."

"I don't know about that--I doubt that," Poppy put in hastily.

"You doubt it because you are young," he answered, "and your
circumstances are capable of alteration and development. Except under
very exceptional conditions, resignation is no virtue in the young. It
is more often an excuse for cowardice and sloth. But at my age the
world changes its complexion. My circumstances are incapable of
alteration and development. They are final. Therefore I do well to
accept them unreservedly. The work of my life is done. I do not say
that it has been a failure, for I fulfilled the main object I had in
view. But it has certainly been obscure and inglorious. The sun will
sink dimly enough into a bank of fog. My present is meagre in interest
and activity. My future, a brief enough one in all probability, must
of necessity be meagre likewise. Therefore your friendship is of
supreme importance to me."

Iglesias paused. His voice was grave, distinct, weighted with feeling.
He did not look at his companion; he could not trust himself to do so,
for he had discovered in himself unexpected depths of emotion.

"And just on that account," he went on, "I grow childishly nervous,
childishly apprehensive if anything arises which seems to cloud or, in
however small a measure, to endanger the serenity of our intercourse."

He turned and looked at her.

"This constitutes no slight to you, dear friend."

"No," she said, "very certainly it is no slight. On the contrary, it
is very beautiful; but it's an awful responsibility, too."

She sat quite still, her head carried high, her hands clasped in her
lap.

"I've underrated the position, I see. I've only thought of myself so
far and how you pleased me. But though I'm pretty cheeky, too--almost
as cheeky as little Dot--I never had the presumption to put the affair
the other way about."

Poppy began to sway slightly again and pat the palms of her hands
together between her knees.

"It's been a game, the finest game I've ever played; and I swore by
all my gods to play fair. But, as you look at it, our friendship
amounts to a good deal more than a game. It goes very deep. And I'm
not sure--. no, I'm not--whether I'm equal to it."

She glanced at Iglesias strangely through the clinging grey of the
dusk.

"Dear unknown," she said, "I give you my word I'm frightened--I who've
never been frightened at any man yet. In my own little way I've played
pitch and toss with their hearts and made footballs of them--except
that poor young fellow--I told you about him the first time we met--
who gave me the scarf, and whose people wouldn't let him marry me. But
this affair with you is different. It goes very far, it means--it
means nothing short of revolution for me, of putting away and
renouncing very much."

Poppy got up, stood pushing her hair back with both hands from her
forehead. Then she moved across to the further side of the fireplace.
Dominic had risen also. He stood on the near side of the hearth. He
was penetrated with the conviction that a crisis was upon them both,
involving all the happiness of their future relation to one another.

"You don't understand," Poppy cried passionately. "And I don't want
you to understand--that's half the trouble. I want to keep you. Your
friendship's the loveliest thing I've ever had. And yet I don't know.
For I'm not one woman--I'm half-a-dozen women, and they all pull all
sorts of ways so that I daren't trust myself. I want to keep you, I
tell you, I want horribly to keep you. Yet I'm ghastly afraid I'm not
equal to it. The price is too big."

As she spoke Poppy dashed her hand against the push of the electric
bell, and held it there, ringing a prolonged alarum, in quick response
to which Phillimore, the respectable elderly parlour maid, appeared,
bearing two rose-shaded lamps. Noiselessly and deftly--as one
accustomed to agitations, whose eyes did not see or ears hear if it
should be unadvisable to permit them to do so--she drew the curtains,
made up the fire, set out the tea-table. And with that change of scene
and shutting out of the dusk, Poppy seemed to change also; gravity and
strength of purpose departing from her, and leaving her--
notwithstanding her sober dress--unreal, fictitious, artificial, the
red-lipped carmine-tinted lady of the footlights, of the windswept
dust and embroidered dragons again. She chattered, moreover,
ceaselessly, careless of interruption, and of criticism alike.

"Here, let's hark back to the ordinary conduct of material existence,"
she said. "Tea? Won't you sit down? No--well, just as you like best.
Take it standing. Let me see, what were we discussing when we got
switched on to unexpectedly personal lines of conversation? The war--
yes, I remember. I was just going to tell you that Fallowfeild
believes it's going to be a nasty dragging unsatisfactory business.
Everyone gasses about the Boers being a simple pastoral people. But
Fallowfeild says their simplicity is just another name for guile, and
that he anyway can't conceive a more disconcerting job than fighting a
nation of farmers and huntsmen and gamekeepers in their own country,
every inch of which they know. People say they've no military science.
But so jolly much the better for them. They can be unfettered
opportunists, with nothing to think of but outwitting the enemy and
saving their property and their skins. The poor British Tommy will be
no match for them; nor will the British officer-man either, till he's
unlearned his parade-ground etiquette, and his haw-haw red-tape
methods and manner, and learned their very primitive but very cute and
foxy ones. By which time, Fallowfeild says, the mourning warehouses
here at home will have made a record turnover, and there will be
altogether too many new graveyards for comfort in South Africa."

Poppy paused in her harangue, for Dominic Iglesias had set down his
cup, its contents untasted. He was sad at heart.

"Are you going?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "It grows late. It's time I went, I think."

"Perhaps it is." Poppy's eyes had become inscrutable. "I really ought
to attend to my Gamping, and pass the time of day with Cappadocia. Her
snappishness has scared the maids. They refuse to go within a measured
furlong of her."

Poppy bent down over the tea-table, arranging the teacups with
elaborate neatness.

"Good-by," she said. "I don't quite know when we shall meet again."

"Why?" Iglesias asked. The muscles of his throat were rigid. He had
much ado to speak plainly and naturally. "Are you leaving home?"

"Home?" she answered. "Yes, I'm leaving it. Good-by again. Don't let
me keep you. Certainly I'm leaving home. Indeed, I believe I have left
it already--for good."

And she threw back her head and laughed.

Upon the doorstep a cold rush of air met Mr. Iglesias. Above, the sky
was blue-black and very clear. The road was vacant and grey with
frost. The flame of the gaslamps quivered, giving off a sharp
brightness in the keen atmosphere. Mr. Iglesias turned up the collar
of his coat and descended the steps. Just then a hansom emerged from
the distance and drew up with a rattle and grind against the curb some
twenty paces ahead. The occupant, a young man, flung back the doors
with a thud, and stood a moment on the footboard paying the driver,
who raised himself, leaning forward with outstretched hand across the
glistening black roof of the cab. Then the young man turned round,
swung himself down on to the asphalt pavement, and came forward as
rapidly as a long motor-coat, reaching to his heels, would permit. He
was tall and fair, well-favoured, preoccupied, not to say morose. He
did not vouchsafe Mr. Iglesias so much as a glance as he brushed past
him. The road was still vacant, and in the frosty air sounds carried.
Mr. Iglesias distinctly heard him race up a neighbouring flight of
steps, heard the click and turn of a latchkey in a lock, heard the
slam of a front door pulled to violently. And so doing Dominic turned
cold and a little faint. He would not condescend to look back; but he
had recognised Alaric Barking, and was in no doubt which house he had
entered.

"Keb, sir? 'Ere yer are, sir," the cabby called cheerily. "Very cold
night. Just set one gentleman down, and 'appy to tike another up. Want
to get back to my comfy little West End shelter, so I'll tike yer for
'alf fares, sir, though we are outside the blooming radius."

But Iglesias shook his head. The horse stood limply in a cloud of
steam. Alaric Barking had evidently pushed the pace. But even had the
animal been in better condition, Iglesias had no desire to drive in
that particular cab. He would rather have walked the whole way to
Cedar Lodge.

Opposite the Bell Inn, where the roads fork--one turning away through
Mortlake, the other leading to Barnes Common, Roehampton, and Sheen--
the row of smart little houses degenerates into shops. By the time he
reached these Mr. Iglesias discovered that he was unaccountably tired.
The keen air oppressed his chest, making his breath come short. It was
useless to attempt to go home on foot. Then, with a sense of relief,
he saw that on the far side of the road a couple of omnibuses stood,
the horses' heads turned Londonwards. He crossed, climbed the stairway
of the leading vehicle slowly, and sank into a seat. The 'bustop was
unoccupied, yet Dominic was not by himself. Two companions had climbed
the winding stairway with him and taken their places beside him, Old
Age on his left hand, Loneliness on his right. All up the long
suburban road, while the omnibus bumped and jolted and the fallen
leaves whirled and scurried before the searching breath of the night
wind Iglesias' two companions seemed to lean across him, talking.
There were tones of mockery in their talk, while behind and through
it, as some discordant refrain, he heard the ring of a young man's
eager footsteps, the click and turn of a latchkey, and the slam of a
door as it shut. On nearing the river the cold grew intense. Crossing
the bridge, the waterside lights were reflected in the surface of the
stream, which ran full and strong from the autumn rains, swirling
seaward with an ebbing tide. To Iglesias' eyes the reflections
converted themselves into fiery dragons, writhing in the heat of
deadly conflict, as upon Poppy St. John's oriental scarf. A glare hung
over London, palpitating as with multitudinous and angry life; and
when the omnibus slowed up in Hammersmith Broadway the voice of the
streets grew loud--the monstrous city, so it seemed to Dominic
Iglesias, shouting defiance to the majestic calm and solemnity of the
eternal stars.




CHAPTER XVI


"He says it is nothing serious, only a slight chill; and sends kind
regards and many thanks for kind inquiries, and hopes to be out in a
day or two, when he will call and thank you in person."

This from George Lovegrove to his wife, the latter arrayed in garments
of ceremony and seated upon the Chesterfield sofa awaiting guests. It
was her afternoon at-home.

"Well, I'm sure I hope it is no more than that, Georgie," she answered
comfortably. "Chills are always going about in November, and very
often gentlemen encourage them--especially bachelors--by not changing
into their winter vests and pants early enough. A great deal of
illness is contracted that way."

Here Serena rustled audibly. She stood by the window, holding the lace
curtain just sufficiently aside to get a narrow and attenuated view of
the fog-enshrouded Green. The outlook was far from inspiriting, and
Serena was keenly interested in the conversation going forward between
her host and hostess. But it was not in her programme to let this
appear. She, while straining her ears to listen, therefore maintained
an air of detachment. The word "pants" was, however, too much for her
fortitude, and she rustled. "Really, Rhoda does use the most
dreadfully unladylike expressions sometimes," she commented inwardly.
"She never seems to remember that everyone is not married, though even
if they were I should hope they would not mention those sort of
things. Rhoda is wanting in refinement. I wonder if George notices
that and feels it. If he does notice it, I think he ought to tell her
about it, because--"

But here she fell to listening again, since the said George took up
his parable once more.

"Still, I own I don't like his looks somehow. His face is so thin and
drawn. It reminds me of the time his mother, poor Mrs. Iglesias, died.
I told him, just jocularly, that his appearance surprised me, but he
put it all aside--you know he has a very high aristocratic manner at
times that makes you feel you have been intrusive--and then talked of
other things."

"He has lived too solitary," Mrs. Lovegrove said judicially, "too
solitary, and that tells on any one in middle life. I should never
forgive myself if we left him to mope. You must just try to coax him
over here to stay, Georgie, and I'll nurse him up and humour him, and
fortunately Serena's here, you see, for pleasant company."

Mrs. Lovegrove looked meaningly at her spouse, while the figure at the
window again rustled.

"I am sure you would exert yourself to help cheer poor Mr. Iglesias
up, if he came over to stay, would you not now, Serena?" she inquired
insinuatingly.

"Are you speaking to me, Rhoda?"

"Yes, about Mr. Iglesias coming here to stay."

Serena turned her head and answered over her shoulder.

"Of course you and George are quite at liberty to ask anyone here whom
you like. And if Mrs. Iglesias came I should be perfectly civil to
him. But I should not care, Rhoda, to bind myself to anything more
than that, because I do not find him an easy person to get on with."

She turned to her contemplation of the fog with a renewed assumption
of indifference. George Lovegrove's shiny forehead puckered into
little lines. He looked anxiously at his wife. The good lady, however,
laid a fat forefinger upon her lips and nodded her head at him in the
most archly reassuring manner.

"That's funny," she said, "because Mr. Iglesias is quite the cleverest
of all Georgie's gentlemen friends--except, of course, the dear vicar
--and so I always took for granted anyone like yourself was sure to
get on nicely with him, Serena. Even I hardly ever find him difficult
to talk with."

"I never talk easily to strangers," Serena put in loftily.

"Oh! but you'd hardly call Mr. Iglesias a stranger."

"Yes, I should," Serena declared with emphasis. "I should certainly
call him a stranger. I always call everyone a stranger till I know
them intimately. It is much safer to do so. And it would be absurd to
pretend that I know Mr. Iglesias intimately. You, of course, do, but I
do not. You and George may have seen him frequently since I have been
here, but I have really seen him very seldom, four or five times at
the outside. He has generally appeared to call when I was likely to be
out. I could not help observing that. It may be a coincidence, of
course. But I cannot pretend that I have not thought it rather
marked."

Serena had advanced into the centre of the room. She held herself
erect. She enjoyed making a demonstration. "Rhoda may think I am a
cipher," she said to herself, "but she is mistaken. She may think I
can be hoodwinked and used as a mere tool, but I will let her see that
I cannot." She felt daring and dangerous, and her eyes snapped. The
rustling of her skirts and the emphatic tones of her voice aroused the
parrot, which had been dosing on its perch, its head sunk between its
shoulders and its breast-feathers fluffed out into a little green
apron over its grey claws.

"Pollie's own pet girlie," it murmured drowsily, with dry clickings of
its tongue against its beak, the words jolting out in foolish twos and
threes. "Hi! p'liceman--murder! fire! thieves!--there's another jolly
row downstairs."

Poor George Lovegrove gazed in bewilderment from Serena to the parrot,
from the parrot to his wife, and then back to Serena again.

"You do surprise me! And I am more mortified than I can say that you
should have the most distant reason, Serena--or Susan either--ever to
feel the least slighted in this house. You do surprise me--I can't
believe it has been the least intentional on Iglesias' part. But I
would not have had anything of the kind happen for twenty pounds."

"Pray don't apologise, George," Serena cried, "or I shall feel quite
annoyed. Of course everyone has a right to their own preferences; but
I had been led to expect something different. As I say, it may only be
a coincidence. Nothing may have really been meant. Only it has seemed
rather marked. But in any case it has not been your fault, George."

"I am very glad you allow that, Serena," the good creature said
humbly.

"Oh! yes. I quite excuse you of any intentional slight, George. I
quite trust you. Still, nothing could be more unpleasant than for me
to feel that my being here put any restriction upon your friends
coming to the house. Of course I know Susan and I move in rather
different society from Rhoda and yourself."

"Yes," he assented hurriedly, agonised as to the wife's feelings--
"yes, yes."

"And so it is quite possible that I may not suit some of your
acquaintances."

"Excuse me," he panted--"no, Serena, I cannot think that."

"I am not sure," she returned argumentatively. "Not at all sure,
George. And nothing could be more unpleasant to me than to feel I was
the least in the way. Of course, I should never have come back if I
had supposed I should be in the way; but Rhoda made such a point of
it."

Here the parrot broke forth into prolonged and earpiercing shriekings,
flapping its wings violently and nearly tumbled backwards off its
perch.

"Throw a handkerchief over the poor bird's cage, Georgie dear," cried
Mrs. Lovegrove from the sofa. Her face was red. She had become
distressingly hot and flustered.--"And just as I was flattering myself
it was all turning out so nicely, too," she said to herself.--"No, not
your own, Georgie dear"--this aloud--"you may need it later. The red
bandana out of the right-hand corner of the top drawer of the work-
table."

"I think it would be much simpler for me to go," Serena continued, her
voice pitched in a high key to combat the cries of the parrot and the
rattle of the table drawer, which George Lovegrove in his present
state of agitation found it impossible to shut with accuracy and
despatch.

"Of course, it may inconvenience Susan to have me return sooner than
she expected. She is away speaking at a number of missionary meetings
in the North. And the maids will be on board wages, and the drawing-
room furniture will have been put into holland covers. She counted on
my staying here till I go to my cousin, Lady Samuelson, in Ladbroke
Square, the third week in December. But, of course, all that must be
arranged. I can give up my visit. Lady Samuelson will be annoyed, and
I don't know what excuse I can make to her. Still, I think I had
really much better go; and then you can have Mr. Iglesias, or any
other of your and Rhoda's friends, to stop here without my feeling
that I am in the way. Nothing could be more odious to me than feeling
I was encroaching or forcing myself upon you. Mamma would never have
countenanced such behaviour. It is the sort of thing we were always
brought up to have the greatest horror of. It is a thing I never have
done and never could do. I hope you understand that, George. Nothing
could be further from my thoughts when I accepted Rhoda's invitation
to----"

"Miss Hart, please, ma'am," the little house-parlour-maid trumpeted,
her face very pink from the exertion of attracting her mistress's
attention and making herself heard. Mrs. Lovegrove bounced up from the
sofa. Usually, it must be allowed, the great Eliza was rather at a
discount. Now she was astonishingly welcome. Her hostess's greeting,
though silent, was effusively cordial. She clutched at her guest's
hand as one in imminent risk of drowning at a lifebelt. The said guest
was in her sprightliest humour. She was also in a scarlet flannel
blouse thickly powdered with gradated black discs. This, in
conjunction with purple chrysanthemums in a black hat, her tawny hair
and freckled complexion, did not constitute a wholly delicious scheme
of colour; but to this fact Mrs. Lovegrove was supremely indifferent.

"Good-afternoon," Miss Hart said in a stage whisper, glancing towards
Serena, still bright-eyed and erect. "Don't let me interrupt, pray. My
conversation will keep. I will just sit and listen."

"Listen to what?" Serena cried, almost inarticulate with indignation.

"Why, to your recitation. Our gentlemen often treat us to a little in
that line of an evening, Mrs. Lovegrove, after dinner. I dote on
recitation. Pieces of a comic nature specially, when well delivered."

"I should never dream of reciting," Serena declared heatedly.

"No, really now," Miss Hart returned. "That seems quite a pity. It is
such a pleasant occupation for a dull afternoon like this, do you not
think so, Miss Lovegrove? I declare I was quite sure, from the moment
I came into the hall--while I was taking off my waterproof--that your
cousin was giving you a little entertainment of that kind, Mr.
Lovegrove. Her voice was running up and down in such a very telling
manner."

If glances could scorch, Miss Hart would unquestionably have been
reduced to a cinder, for rage possessed Serena. She had worked herself
up into a fine fume of anger over purely imaginary injuries. And now,
that Eliza Hart, of all people in the world, should intervene with
suggestions of comic recitations!

"Detestable person!" Serena said to herself. "Her conduct is
positively outrageous. Of course she knew perfectly well I was doing
nothing of the kind. Really, I believe anybody would feel her manner
quite insulting. I wonder how George and Rhoda can tolerate her. It
shows George has deteriorated much that he should tolerate her. I am
not so surprised at Rhoda. Of course she never had good taste. I think
I ought to go to my room. That would mark my displeasure. But then she
may have come on purpose to say something particular. I wonder if she
has done so? Of course if she has, she wants to get rid of me. That is
her object. But she is mistaken if she thinks that I shall gratify
her. I think I owe it to myself to make sure exactly what is going on.
I will certainly stay. That will show her I am on the watch."

During this protracted, though silent, colloquy, Serena had remained
standing in the middle of the room. Now she rustled back to the
window, held aside the lace curtain and resumed her contemplation of
the fog-enshrouded Green. Good George Lovegrove gazed after her in
deep dejection and perplexity. Somebody, it appeared to him, had been
extremely unreasonable and disagreeable; but who that somebody was for
the very life of him he could not tell. The wife was out of the
question; while to suppose it Serena approached high treason. Still he
was very sure it could not be that most scrupulously courteous
personage Dominic Iglesias. There remained himself--"Yet I wouldn't
knowingly vex a fly," he thought, "and as to vexing Serena! Sometimes
ones does wish females were not quite so sensitive."

Miss Hart, meanwhile, had taken the unaccustomed post of honour beside
her hostess upon the sofa. She was enjoying herself immensely. She
had a conviction of marching to victory.

"Yes," she said, "Mrs. Lovegrove, dear Peachie Porcher asked me just
to run across as she has missed your last two afternoons, lest you
should think her neglectful. I am well aware I am but a poor
substitute for Peachie--no compliments now, Mr. Lovegrove, if you
please!"

"Mrs. Porcher is in good health, I trust"--this from Rhoda.

"At present, yes, I am happy to say, thank you. But how long it will
continue," Miss Hart spoke impressively--"at this rate I am sure I
cannot tell."

"Indeed," George Lovegrove inquired anxiously. "You don't tell me so?
Nothing wrong, I trust."

"Well, as I always tell her, her sense of duty amounts almost to a
fault--so unselfish, so conscientious, it brings tears to my eyes
often at times. I hope it is appreciated in the right quarter--I do
hope that, Mr. Lovegrove."

Here Rhoda's bosom heaved with a generous sigh.

"There is much ingratitude in the world, Miss Hart, I fear," she said
pensively.

Her husband looked at her in an anguish of apology--whether for his
own sins or those of others he knew not exactly.

"So there is, Mrs. Lovegrove," Eliza responded warmly. "And nobody is
a more speaking example of that truth than Peachie Porcher. When I
think of all she went through during her married life, and yet so
unsuspicious, so trusting--it is enough to melt an iceberg, that it
is, Mrs. Lovegrove. Now, as I was saying to her only this morning,
'You must study yourself a little, get out in the air, take a peep at
the shops, and have some amusement.' But her reply is always the
same.--'No, Liz, dear,' she says, 'not at the present time, thank you.
I know the duties of my position as mistress of Cedar Lodge. When any
one of our gentlemen is ailing, my place is at home. I must remain in
the house in case of a sudden emergency. I should not have an easy
moment away from the place,' she says."

Miss Hart looked around upon her hearers demanding approbation and
sympathy.

"Very affecting, is it not?" she inquired.

After a moment's embarrassed silence, George Lovegrove murmured a
suitable, if timid, assent. His wife assumed a bolder attitude. Goaded
by provocations recently received, she went over--temporarily--to the
side of the enemy.

"I always have maintained Mrs. Porcher was full of heart," she
declared, throwing the assertion across the room, much as though it
was a stone, in the direction of the figure at the window.

Serena drew herself up with a rustle.

"I wonder exactly what Rhoda means by that?" she commented inwardly.
"I think it very odd. Of course, she must have some meaning, and I
wonder what it is. She seems to be changing her line. I am glad I
stayed. I am afraid Rhoda is rather deceitful. I excuse George of
deceit. I believe George to be true; but he is sadly influenced by
Rhoda. I am rather sorry for George."

"So she is, Mrs. Lovegrove," Eliza Hart resumed--"Peachie's too full
of heart, as I tell her. She is forever thinking of others and their
comforts. She grudges neither time nor money, does not Peachie. There
is nothing calculating or cheese-paring about her--not enough, I often
think. Fish, sweetbreads, game, poultry, and all of the very best--
where the profits are to come from with a bill of fare like that
passes my powers of arithmetic, and so I point out to her. I hope it
is appreciated--yes, I do hope that, Mr. Lovegrove"--there the speaker
became extremely coy and playful. "A little bird sometimes seems to
twitter to me that it is. And yet I am sure I don't know. The members
of your sex are very misleading, Mr. Lovegrove. Do not perjure
yourself now. You cannot take me in. And a certain gentleman is very
close, you know, and stand-offish. It is not easy to get at his real
sentiments, is it, now?"

Serena laid back her ears, so to speak. "I was quite right to stay,"
she reflected wrathfully.

"I think Mr. Iglesias is unusually considerate, Miss Hart," George
Lovegrove said tentatively. "He is quite sensible of Mrs. Porcher's
kind attentions. But naturally he is very tenacious of upsetting her
household arrangements and giving additional trouble."

"And then the position of a bachelor is delicate, Miss Hart, you must
admit," Mrs. Lovegrove chimed in. "That's what I always tell Georgie.
It may do all very well in their younger days to be unattached, but as
gentlemen get on in life they do need their own private
establishments. I am sure I am sorry for them in chambers, or even in
good rooms like those at Cedar Lodge. For it is not the same as a
home, Miss Hart, and never can be. There must be awkwardnesses on both
sides at times, especially when, it comes to illness."

Then the great Eliza gathered herself together, for it appeared to her
her forecast had been just and that she was indeed marching to
victory.

"Yes, there is no denying all that," she said, "and I am more than
glad you see it in that light, Mrs. Lovegrove. Between ourselves, I
have more and more ever since a certain gentleman gave up work in the
City. It would be premature to speak freely; but, just between friends
and under the rose, you being interested in one party and I in the
other, there can be no harm in dropping a hint and ascertaining how
the land lies. Of course if it came to pass, it would be to my own
disadvantage, for I do not know how I should ever bear to part with
Peachie Porcher. Still, I could put myself aside, if I felt it was for
her happiness."

"You do surprise me," George Lovegrove exclaimed. He was filled with
consternation, his hair nearly rising on his head. "I had no notion.
Dear me, you fairly take away my breath." He could almost have wept.
"To think of it!" he repeated. "Only to think of it! Miss Hart, you do
surprise me."

"Oh! you must not run away with the notion anything is really settled
yet," she replied. "And I could not say Mrs. Porcher really would,
when it came to the point, after the experiences she had in her first
marriage. She is very reserved, is Peachie. Still, she might. And very
fortunate a certain gentleman would be if she did--it does not take
more than half an eye to see that."

"Dr. Nevington, please, ma'am," announced the parlour-maid, and the
fine clerical voice and clerical presence filled all the room.
Thereupon Serena graciously joined the circle. She was unusually self-
possessed and definite. She embarked in a quite spirited conversation
with the newcomer. And when Eliza Hart, after a few pleasantries of a
parochial tendency with the said newcomer--in whose favour she had
vacated the place of honour upon the sofa--rose to depart, Serena
bowed to her in the most royally distant and superior manner. Her
amiability remained a constant quantity during the rest of the
evening; and when an opportunity occurred of speaking in private to
her cousin, she did so with the utmost cordiality.

"I do hope, George," she said, "you will not think any more of our
little unpleasantness. I can truly say I never bear malice. I own I
was annoyed, for I felt I had not been quite fairly treated by Rhoda.
But, of course, I may have been mistaken. I am quite willing to
believe so and to let bygones be bygones, and stay, as Rhoda pressed
me to do, until I go to my cousin, Lady Samuelson, in December. Of
course it would be more convenient to me in some ways. But I am not
thinking of that. I am thinking of you and Rhoda. I should not like to
disappoint her by leaving her when she wants me to help entertain your
friend, Mr. Iglesias. Of course, I cannot pretend I take easily to
strangers. Mamma was very particular whom we associated with, and so I
have always been unaccustomed to strangers, and I cannot pretend I am
partial to making new acquaintances. Still, I should be very sorry to
seem unaccommodating, or to hurt you and Rhoda by refusing to stay and
assist you."

"Thank you truly, Serena; I am sure you are very kind," the good man
answered. And the best, or the worst, of it was he actually believed
he was speaking the truth!




CHAPTER XVII


The easterly wind blew strong and shattering, bleak and dreary,
against the windows of the bedchamber at the back of the house. The
complaint of the cedar tree, as the branches sawed upon one another,
was long-drawn and loud. These sounds reached Iglesias in the sitting-
room, where he sat, alone and unoccupied, before the fire. For more
than a week now he had been confined to the house. He had set the door
of communication between the two rooms open, so as to gain a greater
sense of space and that he might take a little exercise by walking the
whole length of them. The cry of the wind and the moan of the sawing
branches was very comfortless, yet he made no effort to shut it out.
To begin with, he was so weak that it was too much trouble to move. To
go on with, the melancholy sounds were not ill-suited to his present
humour. For a great depression was upon him, a weariness of spirit
which might be felt. Out of doors London shivered, houses and sky and
the expanse of Trimmer's Green, with its leafless trees and iron
railings, livid, a greyness upon them as of fear. Dominic had no
quarrel with this either. Indeed it gave him a certain bitter
satisfaction, as offering a not inharmonious setting to his own
thought.

Though not robust he was tough and wiry, so that illness of such a
nature as to necessitate his remaining within doors was a new and
trying experience. Crossing Hammersmith Bridge on the 'bustop ten days
previously, the chill of the river had struck through him. Yet this,
in all reasonable probability, would merely have resulted in passing
physical discomfort, but for the moral and spiritual hurt immediately
preceding it. How far the mind has power to cure the body is still an
open question. But that the mind can actively predispose the body to
sickness is indubitable. To realise and analyse, in their several
bearings, the causes and consequences of that same moral hurt
Iglesias' pride and loyalty alike refused. In respect of them he set
his jaw and sternly averted his eyes. Yet, though the will may be
steady to resist and to abstain, the tides of feeling ebb and flow,
contemptuous of control as those of some unquiet sea. They defy
volition, notably in illness when vitality is low. Refuse as he might
to go behind the fact, it remained indisputable that the Lady of the
Windswept Dust had given him his dismissal. Out of his daily life a
joy had gone, a constant object of thought and interest. Out of his
heart a living presence had gone, leaving a void more harsh than
death. And all this had happened in a connection peculiarly painful
and distasteful to him; so that it was as though a foul miasma had
arisen, and, drifting across the face of his fair friendship,
distorted its proportions, rendering all his memories of it suspect.
Further, in this discrediting of friendship his hope of the discovery
of that language of the soul which can alone effect a true adjustment
between the exterior and interior life had suffered violent eclipse.
He had been thrown back into the prison-house of the obvious and the
material. The world had lost its poetry, had grown narrow, sordid,
dim, and gross. His own life had grown more than ever barren of
opportunity and inept. In short, Dominic Iglesias had lost sight of
the far horizon which is touched by the glory of the Uncreated Light;
and, so doing, dwelt in outer darkness once again, infinitely
desolate.

On the afternoon in question he had reached the nadir of disillusion
and distrust. He leaned back in the red-covered chair, his shapely
hands lying, palms downward, along the two arms of it, his vision of
the room and its familiar contents blurred by unshed tears. It was an
hour of supreme discouragement.

"Nothing is left," he said, half aloud, "nothing. The future is as
blank as the present. If this is to grow old, then indeed those whom
the gods love have need enough to die young."

For a space he listened to the shattering wind as it cried in the
window-sashes, to the branches of the cedar sawing upon one another
and moaning as in self-inflicted pain. Newsboys were calling early
specials. The coarse cockney voices, strangled by the easterly blast,
met and crossed one another, died away in a side street, to emerge
again and again encounter. Such words as were distinguishable seemed
of sinister import, agitating to the imagination. Then de Courcy
Smyth's shuffling footsteps crossed the floor of the room overhead.
The wire-wove mattress of his bed creaked as he sat on the edge of it,
kicking off his slippers and putting on walking boots, as might be
gathered from floppings followed by an equally nerveless but heavier
tread. A door opened, closed, and the footsteps descended the stairs.
On the landing without they paused for an appreciable time; but, to
Mr. Iglesias's great relief, deciding against attempt of entry,
continued their cheerless progress down to the hall below. Yet, just
now Iglesias could have found it in his heart to envy the man,
notwithstanding his unsavouriness of attitude and aspect. For in him
ambition still stirred. He had still definite work to do, and the hope
of eventual fame to support him during the doing of it; had the
triumph of the theatre, the applause of an audience in the white heat
of enthusiasm to dream of and strive after.

"But, for me, nothing," Iglesias repeated, "whether vital as of those
far-away southern battle-fields, or fictitious and close at hand as of
the stage. Not even the sting of poverty to whet appetite and give an
edge to bodily hunger. Nothing, either of fear or of hope. The measure
of my obscurity is the measure of my immunity from change of fortune,
bad or good. I am worthless even as food for powder. Danger herself
will have none of me, and passes me by."

With that he raised his hands and let them drop despairingly along the
arms of the chair again, while the unbidden tears overflowed. For a
minute or more he remained thus, weeping silently with bowed head.
Then, a movement of self-contempt taking him, he regained his calm,
sat upright, brushing away the tears.

And it was as though, in thus regaining a clearer physical vision, he
regained a clearer mental vision likewise. Purpose asserted itself as
against mere blind acquiescence. Iglesias looked up, demanding as of
right some measure of consolation, some object promising help. So
doing, his eyes sought a certain carven oak panel set in an ebony
frame. From his earliest childhood he remembered it, for it had hung
in his mother's bedchamber; and in those far-away years, while she
still had sufficient force to disregard opposition and make an open
practice of prayer, she had kneeled before it when engaged in her
devotions. Waking at night--when as a baby-child, during his father's
long absences, he slept in her room--Dominic had often seen the
delicate kneeling figure, wrapped in some loose-flowing garment, the
hands outstretched in supplication. Even then, in the first push of
conscious intelligence, the carven picture had spoken to him as
something masterful, for all its rigidity and sadness, and very strong
to help. It had given him a sense of protection and security, so that
his little soul was satisfied; and he could go to sleep again in
peace, sure that his mother was in safe keeping while--as he said--she
"talked to it." In the long interval which had elapsed since then he
had lost touch with the spirit of it, though preserving it as among
the most cherished of his family relics. His appreciation of it had
become aesthetic rather than religious. But now, as it hung on the
dimly white wall above his writing-table on the window side of the
fireplace, the dreary London afternoon light took the surface of it,
bringing all the details of the scene into prominence. Suddenly,
unexpectedly, the old power declared itself. The picture came alive as
to the intention and meaning of it. It spoke to him once again, and
that with no uncertain voice.

Three tall narrow crosses uplifted against a cloudless sky. Below, a
multitude of men, women, and horses, carved in varying degrees of
relief. Some starting into bold definiteness, some barely indicated
and as though imprisoned in the thickness of the wood; but all grave,
energetic, and, whether inspired by compassion or by mockery, fierce.
These grouped around a great web of linen--upheld by some of them at
the four corners, hammock-wise, high at the head, low at the foot--
wherein lay the corpse of a man in the very flower of his age, of
heroic proportions, spare yet muscular, long and finely angular of
limb, the articulations notably slender, the head borne proudly though
bent, the features severely beautiful, the whole virile, indomitable
even in the physical abjection of death.

In this Spanish presentment of the closing act of the Divine Tragedy
the sensuous pagan element, which mars too many otherwise admirable
works of religious art, was absent. Its appeal was to the intellect
rather than to the emotions, inculcating effort rather than inviting
any sentimental passion of pity. Its message was that of conquest, of
iron self-mastery and self-restraint. This was bracing and courage-
begetting even when viewed from the exclusively artistic standpoint.
But now not merely the presentment of the event held Iglesias'
attention, but the event presented, the thing in itself. His heart and
intelligence grasped the meaning of it, not only as a matter of
supreme historic interest in view of its astonishing influence upon
human development during the last two thousand years; but as an ever-
present reality, as an exposition of the Absolute, of that which
everlastingly has been, and everlastingly will be, and hence of
incalculable and immediate importance to himself. It spoke to him of
no vague and general truth; but of a truth intimate and individual,
coming to him as the call to enter upon a personal inheritance. Of
obedience to the dictates of natural religion, and faithful practice
of the pieties of it, Dominic Iglesias had, all his life, been a
remarkable if unconscious exponent. But this awakening of the spirit
to the actualities of supernatural religion, this crossing of that
dark immensity of space which appears to interpose between Almighty
God and the mind of man, was new to him. He had sought a language of
the soul which might effect an adjustment between the exterior and
interior life. Here, in the Word made Flesh, with reverent amazement
he found it. He had sought it through the instrumentality of the
things of time and sense; and they, though full with promise, had
proved illusory. He had fixed his hope on relation to the creature.
But here, all the while, close beside him, waiting till the scales
should fall from his eyes and he should see and understand, had stood
the Creator. Fair, very fair--while it lasted--was human friendship.
But here, had he but strength and daring to meet it, was a friendship
infinitely fairer, immutable, eternal--namely, the friendship of
Almighty God.

The easterly wind still cried in the window-sashes, harsh and
shattering. The branches of the exiled cedar tree sawed upon one
another, uttering their long-drawn complaint. The voices of the
newsboys, hoarse and raucous, shouting their sinister message, still
came and went. The livid light of the winter afternoon grew more
dreary as it sank into, and was absorbed by, the deepening dusk. But
to Dominic Iglesias these things had ceased to matter. Dazzled,
enchanted, confounded, alike by the magnitude and the simplicity of
his discovery, he remained gazing at the carven panel; gazing through
and beyond it to that of which it was the medium and symbol, gazing,
clear-eyed and fearlessly, away to the far horizon radiant with the
surpassing glory of the Uncreated Light.




CHAPTER XVIII


The Black Week had just ended; but the humiliation of it lay, as a
dead weight, upon the heart of London. Three crushing reverses in
eight days--Stormberg, Magersfontein, and finally Colenso! There was
no getting rid of the facts, or the meaning of them in respect of
incapacity, blundering, and reckless waste of personal valour. It was
a sorry tale, and one over which Europe at large chuckled. It has been
universally assumed that the English are a serious nation. This is an
error. They are not serious, but indifferent, a nation of
individualists, each mainly, not to say exclusively, occupied with his
own private affairs. With the vast majority unity of sentiment is
suspect, and patriotism a passive rather than an active virtue. But at
this juncture, under the stress of repeated disaster, unity of
sentiment and patriotism--that is, a sense of the national honour and
necessity for the vindication of it--became strongly evident. London
was profoundly and visibly moved. Not with excitement--that came
later, manifesting itself in hysterical outcries of relief--but with a
grim anger and sadness of astonishment that such things could indeed
be. Strangers, passing in the street, looked one another in the eyes
questioningly, a common anxiety forging unexpected bonds of kinship.
The town was curiously hushed, as though listening, always listening,
for those ugly messages rushed so perpetually by cable from overseas.
Men's faces were strained by the effort to hear, and, hearing, to
judge justly the extent and the bearings of both national and
individual damage. Already mourning struck a sensible note in women's
dress. If the Little Englander capered, he was careful to do so at
home, or in meeting-places frequented only by persons likeminded with
himself. It may be questioned whether he is not ever most courageous
when under covert thus; since shooting out of windows or from behind
hedges would appear to be his inherent, and not particularly gallant,
notion of sport. The newsboys alone openly and blatantly rejoiced,
dominating the situation--as on Derby Day or Boat-race Night--and
putting a gilded dome to the horror by yelling highly seasoned lies
when truth proved insufficiently evil to stimulate custom to the
extent of his desires. Depression, as of storm, permeated the social
atmosphere. Churches were full, places of amusement comparatively
empty. To laugh seemed an indiscretion trenching on indecency.

Amid surrounding bravery of imperial purple, cream-colour, and gold,
Poppy St. John sat at the extreme end of the first row of balcony
stalls in the newly opened Twentieth Century Theatre. This was a calm
and secluded spot, since the partition, dividing off the boxes,
flanked it on the right. Partly on this account Poppy had selected it.
Partly, also, because it afforded an excellent view of the left of the
stage; and it was on the left--looking from the body of the house--
that the principal action of the piece, as far as Dot Parris's part
was concerned, took place. Poppy was unattended. She wanted an
evening's rest, an evening free of conversation and effort; but she
wanted something to look at, too, something affording just sufficient
emotional stimulus to keep importunate thought at bay. This the
theatre supplied. It had ceased long ago to tire her. She knew the
ways of it from both sides of the footlights uncommonly well, and
loved them indifferently much. She was a shrewd and cynical critic.
Nevertheless, to go to the play was a sort of going home to her--a
home neither very socially nor morally exalted, perhaps, but one
offering the advantages of perfect familiarity.

Huddled in a black velvet fur-lined sacque, reaching to her feet and
abundantly trimmed with jet embroidery and black lace, she settled
herself in her place. The soft fur was cosey against her bare neck.
She felt chilly. Later she might peel, thereby exhibiting the values
of the rest of her costume. But it was not worth while to do so yet.
The first piece was over, but the house was still a poor one. It might
fill up. She hoped it would for Dot's sake; for few things are more
disheartening than to play to empty benches. But, at present, the
audience was altogether too sparse for it to be worth while to
sacrifice comfort to effect. In point of fact, Poppy was cold from
sheer fatigue. For the last month, to employ her own rather variegated
phraseology, she had racketed, had persistently and pertinaciously
been "going the pace." No doubt they do these things better in France;
yet, as she reflected, provided you are unhampered by prejudice, are
fairly in funds and know the ropes, even grimy fog-bound London is, in
this particular connection, by no means to be sneezed at. And truly
Poppy's autobiography during the said month would have made extremely
merry reading, amounting in some aspects to a positive classic--though
of the kind hardly suited as a basis of instruction for the pupils of
a young ladies' school. Setting aside adventures of a more
questionable character, a positively alarming good luck had pursued
her, everything she touched turning to gold. Even in this hour of
financial depression the market favoured her both in buying and
selling. If she put money on a horse, that horse was sure to win. If
she played cards--and she had played pretty constantly--she inevitably
plundered her opponents. This last alone, of all her doubtful doings,
really troubled her; for her opponents had frequently been youthful,
and it was contrary to Poppy's principles to pluck the but
half-fledged chick.

Barring this solitary deflection from her somewhat latitudinarian code
of ethics, she had, on the face of it, ample cause for self-
congratulation. Never had she been more gaily audacious in word or
deed. Never had she been better company, keeping her audience--an
almost exclusively masculine one--in a roar, all the louder perhaps
because of inward defiance of the news from over-seas, the humiliation
of which had now culminated in the disasters of the Black Week. Flame
only shows the brighter for a sombre background. And Poppy, during
this ill-starred period, had been as a flame to her admirers and
associates--a fitful, prankish flame, full of provocation and
bedevilment, the light of it inciting to all manner of wild doings
and, in the end, not infrequently scorching those pretty shrewdly who
were over-bold in warming themselves at the heat of it. For fires of
the sort lighted by Poppy are not precisely such as contribute to the
peace and security of the domestic hearth.

But now she was tired. The fun seemed fun no longer; so that,
notwithstanding her successes, she found herself a prey to
dissatisfaction, discontent, and a disposition to recall all the less
happy episodes of her varied career. She yawned quite loudly, as she
laid opera-glasses and play-bill upon the velvet cushion in front of
her, and pulled the soft fur-lined garment up closer about her
shoulders.

"The first act's safe to be poorish anyhow, and Dot does not come on
till just the end of it. I wonder if I dare go to sleep?" she asked
herself, gently rubbing her eyes. "It would be awfully nice to forget
the whole blooming show, past, present, and to come, for a little
while and plunge in the waters of oblivion. Oblivion with a capital O
--a dose of that's what I want. Beautiful roomy consolation-stakes
of a word, oblivion, if one could only believe in the existence of
it--which, unluckily, some-how I can't."

Here the strains of the orchestra ceased. The lights were turned low
in the body of the house. The curtain went up. As it did so a cold
draught drew from regions behind the stage, laden with that
indefinable odour of gas, glue, humanity, flagged stair and alleyways,
paint, canvas, carpentry, and underground places the sun never
penetrates, which haunts the working part of every theatre. Poppy
smiled as she snuffed it, with a queer mingling of enjoyment and
repulsion. For as is the smell of ocean to the seafarer, of mother-
earth to the peasant, of incense to the priest, so is the smell of the
theatre to the player. Nature may revolt; but the spell holds. Once an
actor always an actor. The mark of the calling is indelible. Even to
the third and fourth generation there is no rubbing it out.

"I suppose it would have been wiser if I had stuck to the profession,"
Poppy commented to herself. "I should have been a leading lady by now,
drawing my thirty to forty pounds a week. I had the root of the matter
in me. Have it still, worse luck; for it's the sort of root which
asserts its continued existence by aching at times like that of a
broken tooth. It was a wrench to give it all up. But then those rotten
plays of his, inflated impossible stuff, which would never act--
couldn't act!--and I carrying them round to manager after manager and
using all the gentle arts I knew to get them accepted. Oh! it was very
dignified, it was very pretty! And then his perpetual persecutions for
money, his jealousy and spite, and his fine feelings, his infernal
superiority--yes, that was what really did the job. Flesh and blood
couldn't stand it. To prove to a woman, at three meals daily, that she
couldn't hold a candle to you in birth, or brains, or education; and
then expect her to slave for you--and make it jolly hot for her if she
didn't, too--while you sat at home and caressed the delusion of your
own heaven-born genius in the only decently comfortable chair in the
house! No, it was not good enough--that it was not."

Poppy surveyed the stage, unseeing, her great eyes wide with unlovely
memories.

"I wonder what's become of him," she said presently. "He hasn't dunned
me for months. Has he found some other poor wretch to bleed? Must
have, I imagine, for he always declared he was on the edge of
starvation. Supposing that was true, though--supposing he has
starved?"

Her thought sank away into a wordless reverie of the dreariest
description. Suddenly she roused herself, clenching her hands in her
lap.

"Well, supposing he has, what does it matter to me? If ever a man
deserved to starve, he did, vain, lazy, cowardly, self-seeking jackal
of a fellow. Why in the name of reason should I trouble about him--
specially to-night? But then why, whenever I am a bit done, does the
remembrance of him always come back?"

Poppy yawned again, staring blankly at the persons on the stage,
hearing the sound of their speech but knowing only the sense of her
own thought.

"Why? Because it's like him, because it's altogether in the part. He
was always on the watch for his opportunity; wheedling or
blackguarding, directly he saw one had no fight left in one, till he
got his own way."

She leaned forward, resting her hands on the velvet cushion.

"I am confoundedly tired," she said. "All the same, it's rather
horrible. If the thing came over again, which mercifully it can't, I
should do precisely the same as I did. And yet I'm never quite sure
which of us was really in the right. And, therefore, I suppose just as
long as I live, whenever I'm dished--as I am to-night--I shall work
the whole hateful business through again, and the remembrance of him
will always come back."

She pushed the soft heavy masses of hair up from her forehead with
both hands.

"In the main it was your own fault, de Courcy Smyth, and you know that
it was. Most women would not have held out nearly as long as I did. So
lie quiet. Let me be. Starve, if you've got as far on the downgrade as
that. What do I care? I owe you nothing. You never gave me a child. So
starve, if you must--yes, starve," she said.

Then she gathered herself back into her stall. Her expression changed.

"Ah, there's Dot. They're giving her a reception. Bless them--how
awfully sweet! Hurrah for poor little Dot!" Her hands went up to
applaud. And for the ensuing ten minutes her fatigue was forgotten.
She became absorbed in the action of the piece.




CHAPTER XIX


Dot Parris earned a recall at the end of the first act, conquering by
sheer force of personality that gloomy and half-hearted audience. And
Poppy St. John--among whose many faults lack of generosity certainly
could not be counted--standing up, leaned right out over the velvet-
cushioned barrier of the dress circle, crying "Brava!" and clapping
her hands. To achieve the latter demonstration with befitting
resonance she had stripped off her gloves. Then as the lights were
turned up and the curtain swung into the place, she proceeded to
further stripping--namely, that of her black embroidered sacque,
which she threw across the back of the empty stall beside her, thereby
revealing a startling costume. For she was clothed in rose-scarlet
from shoulder to foot; and that without ornament of any description to
break up the daring uniformity of colour, save the stiff unstanding
black aigrette in her hair, tipped with diamond points which flashed
and glittered as she moved. The soft _mousseline-de-soie_ of
which her dress was made swathed her figure, cross-wise, without
apparent fastening, moulding it to the turn of the hips. Thence the
skirt flowed down in a froth of rose-scarlet gaugings and fluted frills,
which trailed behind her far. The bodice was cut in a deep V back and
front, showing her bare neck. Her arms were bare, too, from the elbow.
Her skin, somewhat sallow by day, took on a delicate ivory whiteness
under the electric light. By accident or design she had omitted to
tinge her cheeks to-night; and the even pallor of her face emphasised
the largeness of her eyes--luminous, just now, with sympathy and
enthusiasm. For the artist in Poppy dominated all else, vibrant and
alert. The glamour of the actor's life was upon her; the seamy side of
it forgotten--its unworthy rivalries and bickerings, the slangings and
prolonged weariness of rehearsals, its many disappointments,
heart-burnings, and sordid shifts. These were as though they were not;
so that the stage called her, even as the sea calls one, and mother-earth
another, and religion a third.

"Pou-ah! aren't I just hot, though!" she said, half aloud, as she
flung off her sacque. "And what a changeling imp of a creature Dot is,
after all! An imp of genius.--well, she's every right to that, as one
knows when one looks at James Colthurst's pictures. He'd genius. He
didn't shirk living. My stars! there was a man capable of adding to
the number of one's emotions! And she's inherited his gifts on her own
lines. What a voice, what gestures! She is as clever as she can stick.
Oh! she's a real joy of a demon of a thing, bless her; and she's
nothing like come to her full strength yet."

Then growing aware that she herself and her vivid attire were
beginning to attract more attention than, in the interests of a quiet
evening, she desired, Poppy subsided languidly into her stall, and,
picking up her opera-glasses, slowly surveyed the occupants of the
house.

There to begin with was Bobby Saville in the second row of the stalls,
flanked on either hand by a contingent of followers. His round dark
head and the set of his tremendous shoulders were unmistakable.
Saville was very far from being a model young man, yet Poppy had a
soft spot in her heart for this aristocratic bruiser and bravo. His
constancy to Dot Parris was really touching. With a dog-like
faithfulness and docility, this otherwise most turbulent of his sex
had followed the object of his affections from music-hall to comic
opera, from comic opera to the high places of legitimate drama. And
Dot meanwhile remained serenely invulnerable, tricking and mocking her
high-born heavy-weight lover, telling him cheerfully she really had no
use for him, though his intentions were strictly honourable. Twenty-
five years hence, she added, when he was an elderly peer, and she had
begun to grow broad in the beam, and the public had begun to grow
tired of her, she might perhaps contemplate the thraldom of wedlock.
But not yet awhile--no, thank you. Her art held all her love,
satisfied all her passions; she had none to waste upon mankind. Two
days hence, as Poppy knew, Bobby Saville would sail for South Africa,
to offer an extensive target to Boer bullets. He had come to bid
farewell, to-night, to the obdurate object of his affections. And his
followers--some of whom were also bound for the seat of war--had come
to support him during those pathetic proceedings.

In the boxes she recognised more than one woman whose rank of riches
had rendered her appearance common property through the medium of the
illustrated papers. But upon these social favourites she bestowed
scant scrutiny. To her they did not matter, since she had a
comfortable conviction that, given their chances, she might safely
have backed herself to beat them at their own game. One large and
gentle-looking lady did attract her, by the innocence of her mild eyes
set noticeably wide apart, and by the beauty of her small mouth. Her
light brown hair, touched with grey, rippled back from her low
forehead under a drapery of delicate lace. She was calm, yet there was
an engaging timidity in her aspect as she sheltered behind the farther
curtain of the box. Beside her sat a young girl, white-clad,
deliciously fresh in appearance, an expression of happy half-shy
expectation upon her charming face. Behind them, in the shadow,
kindly, handsome, debonnair, stood Lord Fallowfeild. His resemblance
to the large and gentle lady declared them brother and sister. Poppy
St. John watched the little party with a movement of tenderness. She
perceived that they were very fond of one another; moreover they were
so delightfully simple in bearing and manner, so excellently well-
bred. But of what was the pretty maiden so shyly expectant? Of
something, or somebody, far more immediately interesting to her than
players or play--so Poppy judged.

Turning from the contemplation of these pleasant people with a sigh
she could hardly have explained--even to herself--Poppy swept the
dress circle with her opera-glasses. Presently she paused, and with a
lift of surprise looked steadily again, then let both hands and
glasses drop upon her rose-scarlet cap. Four rows up and back, on the
far side, in a stall next the stepped gang-way, a man sat. His face
was turned away, his shoulder being towards her, as he leaned sideways
talking to the woman beside him--a slender, faded, yet elegant person
of uncertain age, dressed in fluffy black. In the seat beyond, also
leaning forward and taking part in the conversation, was another man
of so whimsical an appearance as very nearly to make Poppy laugh
aloud. She would unquestionably have done so had she been at leisure;
but she was not at leisure. Her eyes travelled back to the figure
beside the gang-way, which intrigued both her interest and her memory.
Tall, spare, faultlessly dressed, yet with an effect of something
exotic, aloof, unusual about him, he provoked her curiosity with
suggestions of times and places quite other than of the present.

"Who is it?" Poppy said to herself. "Surely I know him. Who the
Dickens is it?"

The conversation ceased. The man drew himself up, turned his head; and
Poppy gave a little choking cry, as she found herself staring Dominic
Iglesias straight in the face.

Whether he recognised her she did not know, did not want to know just
yet. For she needed a minute or two to reckon with the position. It
was so wholly unexpected. It affected her more deeply than she could
have anticipated. Not without amusement she realised that she had
never, heretofore, quite believed in him as an ordinary mortal, who
ate and drank, went to plays, had relations with human beings other
than herself, and conducted himself generally on the commonplace lines
of modern humanity. Therefore to see him under existing circumstances
was, in a sense, a shock to her. She did not like it. Absurd and
unreasonable though it undoubtedly was to feel it so, yet his presence
here struck her as in a way unseemly, derogatory. She had never
thought of him in this connection, and it took a little time to get
accustom to this aspect of him. Then she discovered, with half-
humorous annoyance, that she was called upon to get accustomed to
something else as well--namely, to her memories of the past month
since she parted from him. For it was undeniable that the said
memories took on a queer enough complexion in the light of this sudden
encounter with Dominic Iglesias. If an hour ago they had been
unsatisfactory, now they were very near odious. And that seemed hardly
fair. Poppy turned wicked.

"For what's the worry, after all?" she asked herself. "Why on earth am
I either disappointed or penitent? Is he no better than the rest of
us, or am I no worse? And with what am I quarrelling, in any case--his
being less of a saint, or I less of a sinner than I'd been pleased to
imagine? I'm sure I don't know."

Instinctively her eyes sought that kindly worlding, Lord Fallowfeild.
With him at least, as she reflected, one knew exactly where one was,
since his feet were always very much upon the floor. But here again
discomfiture, alas! awaited her. For another person, and evidently a
welcome one, had joined that pleasant little party. Standing beside
the large and gentle lady, speaking quickly, gaily, his face keen and
eager, she beheld Alaric Barking. Lord Fallowfeild, smiling, patted
the young man affectionately on the shoulder. And then, with a shudder
of pain gnawing right through her, Poppy St. John, glancing at the
graceful white-clad maiden, understood of whose coming this one had
been so sweetly and gladly expectant.

To the strong there is something exhilarating in all certainty, even
certainty of disaster. And it was very characteristic of Poppy that at
this juncture no cry came to her lips, no sob to her throat. She
shuddered that once, it is true. But then, setting her teeth, the
whole daring of her nature rose to the situation, as a high-mettled
horse rises to a heavy fence. What lay on the other side of that fence
she did not know as yet, nor did she stop to consider. Desperate
though it looked, she took it gallantly without fuss or funking.

"Well, there's no ambiguity about this affair, anyhow," she said
grimly. "Of course it had to come sooner or later, and I knew it had
to come. Well, here it is, that's all, and there's no use whining. And
that's why he's been so jumpy lately: he had a bad conscience. Poor
old chap, he must have been having a beastly bad time of it."

Poppy mused a little.

"Still, it's a facer," she added, "and a precious nasty one, too."

She stretched herself, shaking back her head, while the diamond points
of her aigrette danced and glittered. Took a deep breath, filling her
lungs; listened to herself, so to speak, noting with satisfaction that
neither heart nor pulse fluttered.

"No serious damage," she commented. "I must have the nerves of a
locomotive. Here I am perfectly sound, perfectly sober, standing at
the parting of the ways, between the dear old devil of love and the
deep sea of friendship. Poppy Smyth, my good soul, you've always been
rather fatally addicted to drama. Are you satisfied at last? For just
now, heaven knows, you've jolly well got your fill of it."

Then, for a space, she sat staring out into the house, thinking hard,
intently, yet without words. The future, as she knew, hung in the
balance, for herself and for others; but, as yet, she could not decide
into which scale to throw the determining weight. Presently she looked
steadily at Dominic Iglesias. He was again engaged in conversation,
trying, with his air of fine old-world courtesy, suitably to entertain
his strangely assorted neighbours. Poppy had an idea he found it
rather hard work. She was not in the least sorry. That faded piece of
feminine elegance, in fluffy black, bored her. She entertained a
malicious hope that the said piece of feminine elegance bored Mr.
Iglesias also. Finally, with rather bitter courage, she turned her
eyes once more upon Lord Fallowfeild and his companions.

"Poor little girl, poor little girl," she said, quite gently, "so
that's your heaven on earth, is it? I'm afraid a mighty big crop of
wild oats is on show in your Garden of Eden. Still to you, apparently,
it is a blissful place enough. Only the question is, do I intend to
relinquish my rights in that particular property and make it over to
you in fee simple, my pretty baby, or do I not? Shall I give it you,
or shall I keep it? For it is mine to give or to keep still--very much
mine, if I choose to make a fight for it, I fancy."

Yet even as she communed thus with herself, the white-clad maiden and
the other occupants of the box became indistinct and shadowy. The buzz
of conversation in the theatre had ceased; so had the strains of the
orchestra. The lights had been turned low and the curtain had risen
upon the second act.

About half-way through that act Poppy St. John got up, threw her
velvet sacque over her arm, and, slipping past the three intervening
stalls, made her way up the steps of the near gang-way to the swing-
doors opening out to the couloir. Her movements, though studiously
quiet, were, owing to the vivid hue of her attire, very perceptible
even in the penumbra of the dress circle, provoking attention and
smothered comment. The lady in fluffy black, for example, followed her
with glances of undisguised and condemnatory interest, finally calling
the attention of both her cavaliers to the progress of this glowing
figure.

The New Century Theatre is one of those enterprises of trans-Atlantic
origin, undertaken with the praiseworthy and disinterested object of
teaching the Old World "how to do it," and is built and furnished
regardless of expense. The couloirs are wide, lofty, richly carpeted;
the walls of them encrusted with pale highly polished marbles,
pilasters of which, with heavily gilded capitals, flank vast panels of
looking-glass. The moulded ceilings are studded with electric lights,
the glare of which is agreeably softened by pineapple-shaped globes of
crystal glass. The scheme of colour, ranging from imperial purple
through crimson and rose-pink to softest flesh tints, formed an
harmonious setting to the rose-scarlet of Poppy's dress, with its
froth of trailing frills and flounces, as she stood discoursing to a
smart, black-gowned, white-aproned box-keeper.

"You understand, fourth row on the left, next the gang-way? Tell him a
lady wishes particularly to speak to him between the acts. Then bring
him to me here."

"Yes, madam, I quite understand," the young person replied, with much
intelligence, scenting something in the shape of an adventure.

Poppy moved across and sat down on one of the wide divans, and so
doing began to know, once more, how very tired she was. A new
tiredness seemed, indeed, to have been added to the original one. That
first was, at worst, bored and irritable. This was of a different, a
more sad and intimate character.

"I feel as if I had been beaten all over," she said to herself. "Well,
perhaps that's just what it is. I have been beaten. I wish I could
sleep. Oh! dear, oh! dear, how I wish I could sleep."

Her thought fell away into the vague, the inarticulate, though she did
not sleep. Still there was a temporary suspension of volition, of
conscious mental activity, which, in a degree, rested her. Persons,
passing now and again, looked with curiosity at the brilliant figure,
and inscrutable eyes in the dead-white face. The smart box-keeper,
moved by some instinct of pity, came back more than once, finally
offering one of those unwholesome-looking cups of coffee and boxes of
chocolate of which so few have the requisite audacity to partake.
Poppy roused herself sufficiently to reject these terrible delicacies,
while smiling at the conveyor of them. Then she relapsed into the
vague again, and waited, just waited.

"There's the end of the act, madam," the young woman remarked at last
encouragingly.

"All right," Poppy answered. "Go straight away and bring the gentleman
here to me. I'm in a hurry. I want to get home."

The glass doors of the exits swished back and forth, letting out the
confused stir and murmur of the house, letting out a crowd of men as
well. And the aspect the said crowd presented to Poppy's overstrained
nerves and exalted sensibility was repulsive. For it suggested to her
a flight of gigantic black locusts, strong-jawed, pink-faced, and
white-breasted, driven forth by a common hunger, rather cruelly active
and intent. Her sense of humour was in abeyance, as was her usually
triumphant common sense; so that her thought, going behind appearances
and the sane interpretation of them, declined to that fundamental
region in which the root laws of animal life become hideously bare and
distinct. Out of the deep places of her own womanhood a hatred towards
this crowd of men arose; that secular enmity which exists between the
sexes asserting itself and, for the time being, obscuring both reason
and justice. For upon what, as she asked herself bitterly, when all is
said and done, do these male human locusts pasture, save on the souls
and bodies of women, finding a garden before them, and, too often,
leaving but a desert behind? Sex as sex became abhorrent to her, its
penalties unpardonable, its pleasures as loathsome as its sins.

But from the black-coated throng the trim figure of the box-keeper
just then detached itself; and a moment later Poppy, looking up,
beheld Dominic Iglesias standing before her.




CHAPTER XX


"You sent for me, so I have come," Iglesias said, for Poppy St. John,
usually so voluble, just now appeared speechless.

From the moment he had become aware of her presence in the theatre,
Dominic had been sensible that she presented herself under a new
aspect. Of the many different Poppys he had seen, this was by far the
most powerful and dramatic. She stood out from the rest of the
audience as some splendid tropic flower stands out from a thick-set
mass of foliage, conspicuous in form and colour and in promise. There
were handsome women, smart women, beautifully dressed women in plenty,
but Poppy did not shade in with all these, making but part of a
general effect. She remained unique, solitary; and this not merely on
account of her vivid raiment. The effect of her told upon the mind
quite as much as upon the sight. Yet she did not look out of place.
She looked, indeed, preeminently at home. Out of doors, in the country
sunshine, she had struck Dominic as a slight creature, unreal and
fictitious. Here, amid highly artificial and conventional
surroundings, she seemed to him the most natural and vital being
present, retaining the completeness of her individuality, the energy
and mystery of it alike, almost aggressively evident and untouched.
Iglesias ceased to consider her in relation to his and her broken
friendship, or in relation to that which he so reluctantly divined of
her private life. He contemplated her in herself, finding an element
of things primitive in her, which commanded his admiration, though it
failed, so far, to touch his heart. And if this was the impression he
received seeing her at a comparative distance, that impression was
greatly intensified seeing her now at close quarters. The contrast
between the subtle softness and the flare--as of a conflagration--of
her dress, the weariness of her attitude, and the unfathomable
melancholy of her eyes, stirred him profoundly.

"Yes," she answered quietly, almost coldly, "I know I sent. This was
about the last place I should have expected to run across you. I
flattered myself I was safe enough here. I didn't wish to meet you one
little bit. Still, when I did see you, I wanted you. You're the most
plaguey impossible person to rid oneself of somehow"--her voice and
manner softened a little--"so I sent for you. I don't know why,
because now I've got you I seem to have changed my mind. I have
nothing to say."

"I can easily go," Iglesias remarked gravely.

"No, no, no," she replied, "why should you hurry? I'm sure those two
freaks you're herding--the beetle turned hind-side before and the
withered leaf--can't be frantically interesting. And I like to look at
you. I never saw you before in evening dress, and you're more _grand
seigneur_ than ever. But something's happened to you. I can't tell
off-hand what it is, whether you've come on or gone back. But you're
altered."

"I have had an illness," Iglesias said simply; "and I have been very
unhappy."

"Neither of those are good enough," Poppy answered. "The alteration is
right inside you, in your soul. But you're well again now?" she added.

"Yes, I am well again now."

"And you're no longer unhappy?"

"No," he said. "I am sad, for life is sad; but I am no longer
unhappy."

"That's a nice distinction," Poppy put in, with a rather scornful
inflection. "What's cured your unhappiness? Not an affair of the
heart? Please don't tell me it's anything to do with a woman, for I
warn you I'm awfully off the affections to-night."

"You can make yourself quite easy on that point," Dominic said with a
lift of the head, his native pride asserting itself.

"Ah! that's more like old times!" Poppy's voice softened again, so did
the expression of her face. "Suppose you sit down, dear lunatic. This
wait is a long one, I know. Dot Parris told me it was. Let the freaks
play about together for a little. It will do them good. And I find I
wanted you rather more than I knew at first. I'm beginning to have
something to say after all. Words, only words, perhaps; still it's a
_soulagement_ to sit here with you like this." The corners of
Poppy's mouth drooped and quivered. "I'm having an infernally bad
time; and there's worse ahead."

"I am sorry. I am grieved," Iglesias said. For the charm had begun to
work again, and friendship, as he began to know, although broken-
winged, was very far from dead.

"We won't talk about that," she put in, "or I might make a fool of
myself. Dear man, I think I'd better go home. I'm awfully tired.
Still, I'm better for seeing you." She stood up. "Just help me on with
my coat. Thanks--that's right. Oh! I say, there are the freaks on the
prowl, looking for you!" Poppy's tragic eyes turned naughty,
malicious, gay even for a moment. "What sport!" she said--"unhappy
freaks! The withered leaf has intentions. I see that. She'd like to
eat me without salt. Don't marry her--promise me you won't. Ah!
heavenly, heavenly," she cried. "I need no promises, bless you. Your
face is quite enough. Wretched withered leaf! But look here," she went
on, as she gathered the soft warm garment about her, "I'm tired of
your incognito. Give me your card. I may want you again. So let me
have your name and address."

And Iglesias giving it to her as she requested, she studied it for a
minute silently. Then she turned away.

"I want nothing more. Don't come down with me. One of the boys will
get me a hansom. I'd rather be alone; so just go back to your
flabbergasted freaks, beloved and no-longer-nameless one," she said.




CHAPTER XXI


Thin sunshine slanted in through the lace curtains of the dining-room
window. Encouraged thereby, the parrot preened its feathers, making
little snapping and clicking noises meanwhile with its tongue and
beak. The grass of the Green, seen between the black stems of the
encircling trees, glittered with hoarfrost, while the houses on the
opposite side of it looked flat and featureless owing to the
interposing veil of bluish mist. Tradesmen's carts clattered by at a
sharp trot, the defined sound of them breaking up the all-pervading
murmur of London, and dying out into it again as they passed. At the
street corner, some twenty yards away, a German band discoursed
doubtfully sweet music, the trombone making earnest efforts to keep
the rest of the instruments up to their work by the emission of loud
and reproachful tootings. It was a pleasant and cheery morning as
December mornings go, yet constraint reigned at the Lovegrove
breakfast-table.

The day of Serena's oft-discussed departure had dawned. A few hours
hence she would remove herself and her boxes to her cousin Lady
Samuelson's residence in Ladbroke Square. This should have proved a
source of regret to her host and hostess; and they were conscience-
stricken, confessing to themselves--though not to one another, since
each accredited the other with more laudable sentiments than his or
her own--that relief rather than regret did actually possess them. A
secret from one another, and that a slightly discreditable one, was so
foreign to the experience of the excellent couple that it lay heavy
upon their hearts. Each, moreover, was aware of shame in the presence
of Serena, as in that of a person upon whom they had inflicted an
injury. Hence constraint, which the sunshine was powerless to
dissipate.

"May I pass you the eggs, or bacon, or both, Serena?" George Lovegrove
inquired, his childlike blue eyes meanwhile humbly imploring pardon
for his lack of sorrow at her impending departure. Serena's manner was
stiff and abstracted. This, combined with the rustling of her
petticoats, filled him with anxiety. Was it possible that she knew?

"Thank you, George, only an egg. Not that one, please, it is much too
large. I prefer the smallest. I am not feeling hungry."

"I should never call you much of a breakfast-eater, Serena," Mrs.
Lovegrove observed in her comfortable purring voice, from behind the
tea urn. She was desirous to pacify her guest. "Now I am rather hearty
myself in the morning, always have been so. I do not know whether it
is a good thing or not, as a habit. Still, I think to-day you should
force yourself a little. You should always make provision against a
journey. And then no doubt you are rather fatigued with packing and
getting home so late from the theatre. I am pleased to think you had
an outing your last night here, Serena. Georgie tells me the play was
very comical."

"I dare say it was," Serena replied. "Of course George would be a much
better judge of that than I am. Mamma was always very particular what
we heard and saw when we were children, and I know I am inclined to
think things vulgar which other people only find amusing."

"I did not remark any vulgarity, and do not think Mr. Iglesias would
countenance anything of that kind in the presence of a lady. He would
ascertain beforehand the nature of the piece to which he invited any
lady"--this from George Lovegrove tentatively.

"Oh! of course I don't say there was anything vulgar. I should not
like to commit myself to an opinion. I really have been to the theatre
very seldom. Mamma never encouraged our going. And then, of course,
old Dr. Colthurst, the rector of St. Jude's at Slowby, whose church we
always attended, disapproved of the theatre. He had great influence
with mamma. And he thought it wicked."

"Indeed," Mrs. Lovegrove commented. "I should be sorry to think that,
as so many go. But he may have come across the evils of it personally.
He had a son, an artist, who was very wild, I believe. And I remember
to have heard our dear vicar speak of Dr. Colthurst as stern, but a
true Protestant and a very grand preacher."

"I dare say he was--I don't mean that his son was wild--I know nothing
about that, of course, but that Dr. Colthurst was a great preacher."

Serena spoke abstractedly, inspecting the yolk of her poached egg
meanwhile as though on the watch for unpleasant foreign bodies.

"But," she continued, "I cannot, of course, be expected to remember
his sermons, though I may have been taken to hear him. I suppose I
certainly was taken, but I was quite too much of a child to remember.
Susan remembers them, but then Susan was so very much older."

She ceased to contemplate her egg, and looked up at her hostess.

"Susan must be very nearly your age, Rhoda; or she may be a year or
eighteen months younger. Yes, judging by the difference between her
age and mine, she must be quite eighteen months younger. Of course,
now, Susan thinks going to the play wicked. I often wonder whether
that is not partly because she dislikes sitting still and listening
when other people are doing something. Susan likes to take part in
everything herself. I often wonder what she would do in church if it
was not for the responses and the singing. I am sure she would never
sit out a service where the congregation did not join in. Susan cannot
bear a choral service. She calls it un-English and Romanising. I do
not dislike it--I mean I do not dislike a choral service. But then I
do not consider the theatre wicked. I am not prejudiced against it, as
Susan is. Still, I cannot deny that I think you do hear very odd
things and see very over-dressed people at the theatre."

Serena looked severely at her host, thereby heightening the anxiety
which possessed him. For once again, as so often during the past eight
or ten hours, a picture presented itself perplexing and fascinating to
his mental vision--namely, that of his dear and honoured friend, the
grave and stately Dominic Iglesias, helping an unknown lady, of
remarkably attractive personal appearance, on with a wonderful black
velvet garment--doing so in the calmest way in the world, too, as
though it were an event of chronic occurrence--while the frills and
furbelows of her voluminous skirts flowed in rosy billows about his
feet. What did the picture portend, George Lovegrove asked himself,
and still more, what did Serena suppose it portended?

"Do you, indeed?" Mrs. Lovegrove put in, in amiable response to her
guest's last remark. She was sensible of being hurt by the allusion to
her age. But then Serena was going, and she knew that fact did not
distress her as deeply as it might have done. She therefore rose
superior to wounded feelings. "It's many years since I've been much of
a playgoer," she continued, "and people tell me it's all a good deal
changed, and not for the better. I suppose the dressing nowadays is
sadly extravagant. I am sure I don't know, and I should always be
timid of condemning anybody or their amusements. But there, as I
always do say, if you want to keep a happy mind there is so much it is
well to be ignorant of."

"I wonder if it is--I mean I wonder if it is well to be ignorant of
things," Serena said reflectively. "Of course, if people think you are
willing to be ignorant, it encourages them in deceiving you. I think
it is very wrong to be deceitful. Sooner or later it is sure to come
out, and then it is very difficult to forgive people. Indeed, I am not
sure it is right to forgive them."

With difficulty George Lovegrove restrained a groan. His food was as
ashes in his mouth; his tea as waters of bitterness.

"Oh! I should be sorry to go as far as that, Serena," Mrs. Lovegrove
remonstrated. "If you give way to unforgiving feelings you can never
tell quite where they may carry you. But as I was going to say, though
I am not much of a playgoer, I was very pleased to have Mr. Iglesias
invite me. Only, as I explained to him, I am very liable to find the
seats too narrow for comfort in places of amusement, and the
atmosphere is often so very close, too. He was most polite and
sympathising; but then that's Mr. Iglesias all over. He always is the
perfect gentleman."

Serena paused, her fork arrested in mid-transit to her mouth.

"I am not sure that I agree with you, Rhoda," she said. "I am not sure
whether I think Mr. Iglesias is really polite, or whether he only
appears to be so because it suits his purpose. Of course you and
George know him far better than I do. Perhaps you understand--I cannot
pretend that I understand him. I may be wrong, but I often wonder
whether there is not a good deal which is rather insincere about Mr.
Iglesias."

After throwing which bomb, Serena gave her whole attention to her
breakfast. Usually George Lovegrove would have waxed valiant in
defence of his friend, but a guilty conscience held him tongue-tied.
Not so Rhoda; strive as she might, those allusions to her age still
rankled. And, under cover of protest against injustice to the absent,
she paid off a little of her private score, to her warm satisfaction.

"Well, I am sure," she cried, "I never could have credited that
anybody could question Mr. Iglesias's genuineness! I would sooner
doubt Georgie, that I would, and fear him deceitful."

Again the good man came near groaning. It was as though the wife
planted a poignard in his heart.

"And after you playing the piano to him so frequently the few days Mr.
Iglesias stopped here, and seeming so comfortable together and
friendly, and his inviting us all to the theatre! Really, I must say I
do think you sadly changeable, Serena, that I do."

"No, I am not changeable, Rhoda," the other lady declared, both voice
and colour rising slightly. "Nobody ever accused me of being
changeable before, and I do not like it. I do not think you are at all
justified in making such an accusation. But I am observant. I always
have been so. Even Susan allows that I am very observant. I cannot
help being so, and I do not wish to help it. I think it is much safer.
It helps you to find out who you can really trust. And, of course, I
observed a great deal that happened last night. I felt from the first
that I owed it to myself to be particularly on my guard, because
certain insinuations had been made--you know, Rhoda, you have made
them more than once yourself--and some people might have thought that
things had gone rather far when Mr. Iglesias was stopping here. I
believe Mrs. Porcher and that dreadful Miss Hart did think it. I do
not say that things did go far; I only say that people might naturally
think that they had. On several occasions Mr. Iglesias' conduct did
seem very marked. And, of course, nothing could be more odious to me
than to be placed in a false position. One cannot be too careful,
especially with foreigners. Mamma always warned us against foreigners
when we first came out. I never had any experience of foreigners until
I met Mr. Iglesias, here at your house. But, I am sorry to say, I
believe now mamma was perfectly right."

As she ended her harangue, Serena with a petulant movement of her thin
hands pushed her plate away from the table edge, leaving a vacant
space before her. This was as a declaration of war. She scorned
further subterfuge. She announced a demonstration. A bright spot of
colour burned on either cheek, her small head, on its long stalk of
neck, was carried very erect. It was one of those pathetic moments
when--the merciless revelations of the morning sunshine
notwithstanding--this slim, faded, middle-aged spinster appeared to
recapture, and that very effectively, the charm and promise of her
vanished youth. Excited by foolish anger, animated by a sense of
insult wholly misplaced and imaginary, she became a very passably
pretty person, the immature but hopeful Serena of eighteen looking
forth from the eyes of the narrow-souled disappointed Serena of eight-
and-forty.

"Of course, George may have some explanation of what happened last
night," she went on, speaking rapidly. "If he has, I think it would be
only fair that he should offer it to me. I took for granted he would
do so this morning as soon as we met; or that he would send you to me,
Rhoda, to explain if he felt too awkward about speaking himself. But
as you both are determined to ignore what happened, I am forced to
speak. I dare say it would be much more convenient to you, knowing you
have made a mistake, to pass the whole thing over in silence. But I
really cannot consent to that. If Mr. Iglesias meant nothing all
along, then I think he has behaved disgracefully. If he did mean
something at first, and then"--the speaker gasped--"changed his mind,
he might at least have given some hint. He ought to have refused to
stop here, of course."

"He did refuse," George Lovegrove faltered. This was really dreadful,
far worse than anything he had anticipated--and he had not a notion
what it was safe to say. "I do wish females' minds were a little less
ingenious," he commented to himself. "They see such a lot which would
never have entered my head, for instance."

"Still, Mr. Iglesias came," cried the belligerent Serena.

"Yes, I over-persuaded him. He was very unwilling, very so indeed,
saying that staying out was altogether foreign to his practice. But I
pointed out to him that you and the wife might feel rather mortified
if he omitted to come, having taken such an interest in his illness
and--"

If you made use of my name, George, you took a great liberty."

"I am very distressed to hear you say that, Serena. Both the wife and
I certainly supposed you wished him to come."

He looked imploringly at his spouse, asking support. But for once the
large kindly countenance failed to beam responsive. A plaintive
expression overspread its surface. Then the unhappy man stared
despondently out into the misty morning sunshine, plastering down his
shiny hair with a moist and shaky hand. Even the wife turned against
him, making him feel an outcast at his own breakfast-table. He could
have wept.

"I have been so very guarded throughout," Serena resumed, "that it is
impossible you should have the slightest excuse for using my name.
But, of course, if you have done so, my position is more than ever
odious. There is nothing for me to do but to go. Fortunately I am
going--and I am thankful. If I had followed my own inclinations, I
should have gone long ago. Then I should have been spared all this,
and nothing would have been said. Now all sorts of things may be said,
because, of course, it must all look very odd. It shows how foolish it
is to allow one's judgment to be overruled. I stayed entirely to
oblige Rhoda. And I cannot but see I have been trifled with."

"No, no, Serena, not that--never that," her host cried distractedly.
"If I have been in the wrong, I apologise from my heart. But trifling
never entered my thoughts. How could it do so, with all the respect I
have for you and Susan? I may have been clumsy, but I acted for the
best."

"I am afraid I cannot agree," she retorted. "It is useless to
apologise. I am sorry to tell you so, George, for I have trusted you
until now; but I do feel, and I am afraid I always shall feel, I have
been very unkindly treated by you and Rhoda."

She rose, rustling as she spoke, the parrot, meanwhile, leaving off
preening its feathers, regarding her, its head very much on one side,
with a wicked eye.

"No, please leave me to myself," she said. "I do not want anybody to
help me, and if I do I shall ring for the maids. I want to compose
myself before I go to Lady Samuelson's. After all this unpleasantness,
it is much better for me to be alone."

"Good-bye, girlie, poor old girlie. Hi! p'liceman, bring a four-
wheeler," shrieked the parrot, as Serena opened and closed the dining-
room door, flapping wildly in the sunshine till the sand and seed
husks on the floor of its cage arose and whirled upwards in a crazy
little cloud.

George Lovegrove, who had risen to his feet, sank back into his chair,
resting his elbows on the table and covering Ids face with his hands.

"I would rather have forfeited my pension," he murmured. "I would
rather have lost a hundred pounds."

Then raising his head he gazed imploringly at his wife. And this time
her tender heart could not resist the appeal. He had not been open
with her, but she relented, giving him opportunity to retrieve his
error. Moreover--but that naturally was a very minor consideration--
she was bursting with curiosity.

"Georgie," she asked solemnly, "whatever did happen last night?"

"Mr. Iglesias met a lady friend. She sent for him to talk to her, in
the lobby, between the acts," he answered, the red deepening in his
clean fresh-coloured face.

"Not any of that designing Cedar Lodge lot?"

"Oh! dear no, not all," he replied, his childlike eyes full of
gratitude. He blessed the magnanimity of the wife. But speedily
embarrassment supervened. He found this subject singularly difficult
to deal with. "Not at all of their class. I confess it did surprise
me, for though I have always taken it for granted Dominic belonged to
a higher circle by birth than that in which we have known him, I had
no idea he had such aristocratic acquaintances. His looks and manner
in public, last night, made him seem fitted for any company. Still, I
was surprised."

"Did he not introduce you?"

"No. I cannot say he had a convenient opportunity, and the lady may
not have wished it. I could fancy she might hold herself a little
above us. But, between ourselves, I believe that was what so upset
Serena."

"I am of opinion Mr. Iglesias is just as well without Serena," Mrs.
Lovegrove declared. "I suppose she cannot help it, but her temper is
sadly uncertain. I begin to fear she would be very exacting in
marriage. But was the lady young, Georgie?"

The good man blushed furiously.

"Yes, under thirty, I should suppose, and very striking to look at.
Serena had called my attention to her already. She thought her over-
dressed. I am no judge of that, but I could see she was very
beautiful."

"Oh! Georgie dear!" This in high protest. For the speaker belonged to
that section of the British public in which puritanism is even yet
deeply ingrained, with the dreary consequence that beauty, whether of
person or in art, is suspect. To admit its existence trenches on
immodesty; to speak of it openly is to skirt the edges of licence.

George Lovegrove, however, had developed unaccustomed boldness.

"So she was, my dear," he repeated, not squinting in the least for
once. "She was beautiful, dark and splendid, with eyes that looked
right through you, mocking and yet mournful. They made a noble couple,
she and Dominic, notwithstanding the disparity of age. As they stood
there together I felt honoured to see them both. And if Dominic
Iglesias is to have friends with whom we are unacquainted--though I
do not deny the thing hurt me a little at first--I am glad they should
be so handsome and fine. It seems to me fitting, and as if he was in
his true sphere at last."

A silence followed this profession of faith, during which Mrs.
Lovegrove's face presented a singular study. She stared at her husband
in undisguised amazement, while the corners of her mouth and her large
soft cheeks quivered.

"Well, I should never have expected to hear you talk so, Georgie," she
said huskily. "It seems unlike you somehow, almost as though you were
despising your own flesh and blood."

"No, no," he answered, "I could never do that. I could never be so
forgetful of all I owe to my own family and to yours, Rhoda. I am
under deep obligations to both. But it would be dishonest to deny that
I set a wonderfully high value on Dominic Iglesias' regard, and have
done so ever since we were boys together at school. To me Dominic has
always stood by himself, I knowing how superior he was to me in mind
and in all else, so that it has been my truest honour and privilege to
be admitted to intimacy with him. But the difference between us never
came home to me as it did when I saw him in other company last night.
He is fitted for a higher position than he has ever filled yet--we all
used to allow that in old days at the bank--or for any society we can
offer him. So, though I felt humiliated in a measure, I felt glad. For
I can grudge him nothing in the way of new friends, even though they
may be differently placed to ourselves and should come between him and
me a little, making our intercourse less frequent and easy than in the
past. From my heart I wish him the very best that is going, although
it should be rather detrimental to myself."

Mrs. Lovegrove's cheeks still quivered, but the expression of her face
was unresponsive once more, not to say obstinate. Jealousy, indeed,
possessed her. For the first time in her whole experience she realised
her husband as an individual, as a human entity independent of
herself. To contemplate him otherwise than in the marital relation was
a shock to her. She felt deserted, a potential Ariadne on Naxos. Hence
jealousy, resentment, cruel hurt.

"Well, to be sure, what a long story!" she cried, in tones approaching
sarcasm, "and all about someone who is no relation, too! Whatever
possesses you, Georgie? You aren't a bit like yourself. It seems to me
this morning everybody's bewitched." She heaved herself up out of her
chair. "I shall go and try to make it up with Serena," she continued.
"It is only Christian charity to do so; and, poor thing, I can well
understand she may have had cause enough for mortification now I have
made out what really did take place last night."

Usually, left alone in the dining-room, George Lovegrove would have
proceeded methodically to do a number of neat little odd jobs, humming
softly the while funny, shapeless little tunes to himself in the
fulness of his guileless content. He would have piled up the fire with
small coal and dust, thus keeping it alight but saving fuel till
luncheon-time, when one skilful stir with the poker would produce a
cheerful blaze. Then he would have proceeded to the little
conservatory opening off his box of a sanctum at the back of the
house--containing his roller-top desk, his papers, Borough Council and
parish reports, his magazines, his best and second-best overcoats hung
on pegs against the wall along with his silk hat. In the conservatory,
still humming, he would have smoked his morning pipe, feeding the
gold-fish in the small square glass tank--a tiny fountain in the
centre of which it pleased him to set playing--and later carefully
examining the ferns and other pot-plants in search of green-fly,
scale, or blight. But to-day the innocent routine of his life was
rudely broken up. He had no heart for his accustomed tidy potterings,
but lingered aimlessly, fingering the gold watch-chain strained across
the convex surface of his waistcoat, sand looking pitifully enough
between the lace curtains out on to the Green.

The sun had climbed the sky, burning up the hoarfrost and mist, so
that the houses opposite had become clearly discernible. Presently he
beheld a tall, upright figure emerge from the front door of Cedar
Lodge. For a moment Mr. Iglesias stood at the head of the flight of
immaculately white stone steps, rolling up his umbrella and putting on
his gloves preparatory to setting forth on his morning walk. And,
watching him, a wave of humility and self-depreciation swept over
George Lovegrove's gentle and candid soul, combined with an aching or
regret that destiny had not seen fit to deal with him rather otherwise
than it actually had. He felt a great longing that he, too, were
possessed of a stately presence, brains, breeding, and handsome looks.
There stirred in him an almost impassioned craving for romance, for
escape from the interminable respectabilities and domesticities of
English middle-class suburban life. He went a step further, rebelling
against the feminine atmosphere which surrounded him, in which
"feelings" so constantly usurped the place of actions, and
suppositions that of fact. Then, the vision of a beautiful woman with
a strange rose-scarlet dress, in whose eyes sorrow struggled with
mocking laughter, once again assailed him. Who she might be, and what
her history, he most emphatically knew not; yet that she breathed a
keener and more tonic air than that to which he was habituated, that
feelings in her case did not stand for actions, or suppositions for
fact, he was fully convinced.

"Poor old chappie, take a brandy and soda. Got the hump?"--this,
shrilly, from the parrot hanging head downwards from the roof of its
cage.

At the sound of that at once unhuman and singularly confidential voice
close beside him, George Lovegrove gave a guilty start.

"Yes, the wife is quite right," he said, half aloud. "If you want to
keep a happy mind there is very much of which it is as well to be
ignorant."

Then shame covered him, for in his recent meditations and
apprehensions had he not come very near turning traitor, and being, in
imagination at all events, subtly unfaithful to that same large kindly
comfortable wife?




CHAPTER XXII


Two months had passed, and February was about to give place to March--
two months empty of outward event for Dominic Iglesias, but big with
thought and consolidation of purpose. He had been more than ever
solitary during this period, for his acquaintance, even to the
faithful George Lovegrove, stood aloof. But Dominic hardly noticed
this. Though solitary, he had not been lonely, since his mind was
absorbed in question, in pursuit, in the consciousness of deepening
conviction. For the recognition not merely of religion, but of
Christianity, as a supreme factor in earthly existence, which had come
to him in the dreary December twilight, as, broken in health and in
spirit, he gazed upon the carven picture of Calvary, had proved no
fugitive experience. It remained by him, entracing his imagination and
satisfying both his heart and his intelligence; so that he looked back
upon the hour of his despair thankfully, seeing in it the starting-
point of a journey the prosecution of which promised not only to be
the main occupation of his remaining years here in time, but, the
river of death once crossed, to stretch onward and onward through
realms, at present inconceivable, of beauty, of knowledge, and of
love. And so, for the moment, solitude was sweet to him, leaving him
free of petty cares and anxieties--he moving forward, ignorant of the
gossip which in point of fact surrounded him, innocent of the feminine
plots and counterplots of which his blameless bachelorhood was at
once the provoking cause and the object; while in his eyes--though of
this, too, he was ignorant--dwelt increasingly reflection of that
mysterious and lovely light which, let obstinately purblind man deny
it as he may, lies forever along the far horizon, for comfort of godly
wayfarers and as beacon of the elect.

Yet it must not be supposed that the outset of Iglesias' spiritual
journey was wholly serene, free from obstacle or hesitation, from risk
of untoward selection, or rejection, of the safe way. Many roads, and
those bristling with contradictory signposts, presented themselves.
Noisy touts, each crying up his own special mode and means of
conveyance, rushed forth at every turn.

Modern Protestantism, as he encountered it in the pages of popular
newspapers and magazines, at Mrs. Porcher's dinner-table, or in the
good Lovegroves' drawing-room, had small attraction for him, since it
appeared to advance chiefly by negations stated with rather blatant
self-sufficiency and self-conceit. It might tend to the making of
respectable municipal councillors; but, in his opinion, it was idle to
pretend that it tended to the making of saints--and for the saints,
those experts in the divine science, Iglesias confessed a weakness. Of
spirituality it showed, to his seeing, as little outward evidence as
of philosophy or of art. The phrases of piety might still be upon the
lips of its votaries; but the attitude and aspirations engendered by
piety were unfortunately dead. Its system of ethics was frankly
utilitarian. Its goal, though hidden from the simple by a maze of
high-sounding sentiment, was Rationalism pure and simple. Its god was
not the creator of the visible universe, of angels and archangels,
dominions, principalities, and powers, of incalculable natural and
supernatural forces, but a jerky loose-jointed pasteboard divinity,
the exclusive possession, since it is the exclusive invention, of the
Anglo-Saxon race, through whose gaping mouth any and every self-
elected prophet was free to shout, as heaven-descended truth, in the
name of progress and liberty, whatever political or social catchword
chanced to be the fashion of the hour.

Nor did the neo-mystics, whose utterances are also sown broadcast in
contemporary literature and who are so lavish with their offers of
divine enlightenment, please Iglesias any better. For his mind, thanks
to his Latin ancestry, was of the logical order, while a business
training and long knowledge of affairs had taught him the value of
method, giving him an unalterable reverence for fact, and impressing
upon him the existence of law, absolute and immutable, in every
department of nature and of human activity--law, to break which is to
destroy the sequence of cause and effect, and so procure abortion.
Therefore this new school of thinkers--if one can dignify by the name
of thinkers persons of so vague and topsy-turvy a mental habit--
nourishing themselves upon the windy meat of secular and time-exploded
fallacies, upon the temple-sweepings of all the religions, oriental
and occidental, old and new, combined with ill-attested marvels of
modern physical and psychological experiment, were far from commending
themselves to his calm and patient judgment. Such excited persons, as
a slight acquaintance with history proves beyond all question, have
existed in every age; and, suffering from chronic mental dyspepsia,
have ever been liable to mistake the rumblings of internal flatulence
for the Witness of the Spirit. In their current pronouncements
Iglesias met with a wearisome passion for paradox, and an equally
wearisome disposition to hail all eccentricity as genius, all hysteria
as inspiration. While in their exaltation of the "sub-conscious self"
--namely, of those blind movements of instinct and foreboding common
to
the lower animals and to savage or degenerate man alike--as against
the intellect and the reasoned action of the will, he saw a menace to
human attainment, to civilisation--in the best meaning of that word--
to right reason and noble living, which it would be difficult to
overestimate. These good people, while pouring contempt on the body,
and even denying its existence, in point of fact thought and talked
about little else. All of which struck him as not only very tiresome
and very silly, but very dangerous. Modern Protestantism might
eventuate in Rationalism, in a limiting of human endeavour exclusively
to the end of material well-being. But this worship of the pseudo-
sciences, this tinkering at the accepted foundations and accepted
decencies of the social order, this cultivation of intellectual and
moral chaos, could, for the vast majority of its professors at all
events, eventuate only in the mad-house. And to the mad-house, whether
by twentieth-century esoteric airship or occult subway, Dominic
Iglesias had not the very smallest desire to go.

For he had no ambition to be "on time" and up-to-date, to electrify
either himself or his contemporaries by an exhibition of mental
smartness. He merely desired, earnestly yet humbly, to be given grace
to find the road--however archaic in the eyes of the modern world that
road might be--which leads to the light on the far horizon and beyond
to the presence of God. The more he meditated on these things the more
inconceivable it became to him but that this road veritably existed;
and that, not by labour of man, but by everlasting ordinance of God.
It was absurd, in face of a state of being so complex, so highly
organised, so universally subjected to law, as the one in which he
found himself, that a matter of such supreme importance as the channel
of intercourse between the soul and its Maker should have been left to
haphazard accident or blundering of lucky chance. And so, having
supplemented his researches in print, by listening to the discourses
of many teachers, from one end of London to the other in lecture-hall,
chapel, and church, having even stood among the crowds which gather
around itinerant preachers in the Park, Dominic found his thought
fixing itself with deepening assurance upon the communion in which he
had been born and baptised, which his father, in the interests of the
revolutionary propaganda, had so bitterly repudiated, and from which
his mother, broken by the tyranny of circumstance and bodily weakness,
had lapsed.

Outside that communion he beheld only weltering seas of prejudice and
conflicting opinion, heard only the tumult of confused and acrimonious
contest. Within he beheld the calm of fearlessly wielded authority and
of loyal obedience; heard the awed silence of those who worship being
glad. For the Catholic Church, as Iglesias began to understand, is
something far greater than any triumphant example of that which can be
attained by cooperation and organisation. It is not an organisation,
but an organism; a Living Being, perfectly proportioned, with inherent
powers of development and growth; ever-existent in the Divine Mind
before Time was; recipient and guardian of the deepest secrets, the
most sacred mysteries of existence; endlessly adaptable to changing
conditions yet immutably the same. Hence it is that Catholicism
presents no questionable historic pedigree and speaks with no
uncertain voice. Claiming not only to know the road the soul must
tread would it reach the far horizon, but to be the appointed warden
of that same road and sustainer of it, she points with proud
confidence to the vast multitude which, under her guidance, has
joyfully trodden it--a multitude as diverse in gifts and estate, as in
age and race--as proof of the authenticity of her mission to the
toiling and sorrowful children of men.

Yet, since unconditional surrender must ever strike a pretty shrewd
blow at the roots both of personal pride and worldly caution, Dominic
Iglesias hesitated to take the final step and declare himself. To one
who has long lived outside the creeds, and that not ungodly, still
less bestially, it is no light matter to subject attitude of mind and
daily habit to distinct rule. Not only does the natural man rebel
against the apparent limiting of his personal freedom, but the
conventional and sophisticated man fears lest agreement should, after
all, spell weakness, while indifferentism--specially in outward
observances--argues strength. A certain shyness, moreover, withheld
Iglesias, a not unadmirable dread of being guilty of ostentation. It
was so little his custom to obtrude himself, his opinions, and his
needs upon the attention of others, that he was scrupulous and
diffident in the selection of time and place. The affair, however,
decided itself, as affairs usually do when the intention of those
undertaking them is a sincere one--and thus.

The tide of war had begun to turn. Earlier in the week had come the
news of General Cronje's surrender, after the three days' shelling of
his laager at Paardeberg. Hence satisfaction, not only of victory but
of compassion, since a sense of horror had weighed on the hearts of
even the least sentimental at thought of the stubborn thousands,
penned in that flaming rat-trap of the dry river-bed, ringed about by
sun-baked rock and sand and death-belching guns. To-day came news of
the relief of long-beleaguered Ladysmith, and London was shaken by
emotion, under the bleak moisture-laden March sky, the air thick with
the clash of joy-bells, buildings gay with riotous outbreak of many-
coloured flags, the streets vibrant with the tread and voices of
surging crowds.

Iglesias, who early that afternoon had walked Citywards to see the
holiday aspect of the town and glean the latest war news, growing
somewhat weary on his homeward journey of the humours of his fellow-
citizens--which became beery and boisterous as the day drew on--turned
in at the open gates of the Oratory, in passing along the Brompton
Road. His purpose was to gain a little breathing space from the
jostling throng, by standing at the head of the steps under the wide
portico of the great church. Looking westward, above the wedge of mean
and ill-assorted houses that marks the junction of the Fulham and the
Cromwell Roads--the muddy pavements of which, far as the eye carried,
were black with people--the yellowish glare of a pallid sunset spread
itself across the leaden dulness of the sky. The wan and sickly light
touched the architrave and columns of the facade of the great church,
bringing this and the statue of the Blessed Virgin which surmounts it
into a strange and phantasmal relief--a building not material and of
this world, but rather of a city of dreams. To Iglesias it appeared as
though there was an element of menace in that cold and melancholy
reflection of the sunset. It produced in him a sense of insecurity and
distrust, which the roar of the traffic and horseplay of the crowd
were powerless to counteract. London, the monstrous mother, in this
hour of her rejoicing showed singularly unattractive. Her features
were grimed with soot, her dull-hued garments foul with slush, her
gestures were common, her laughter coarse. His soul revolted from the
sight and sound of her; revolted against the fate which had bound him
so closely to her in the past, and which bound him still. The spirit
of her infected even the sky above her, painting it with the sad
colours of perplexity and doubt. He stepped farther back under the
portico, moved by desire to escape from the too insistent thought and
spectacle of her. Doing so, he became aware of music reaching him
faintly from behind the closed doors of the church, fine yet sonorous
harmonies supporting the radiant clarity of a boy's voice.

Then Iglesias understood that he was presented here and immediately
with the moment of final choice. Delay was dishonourable, since it was
nothing less than a shirking of the obligations which his convictions
had created. So there, on the one hand--for so the whole matter
pictured itself to his seeing--was London, the type, as she is in fact
the capital, of the modern world--of its ambitions, material and
social, of its activities, of its amazing association of pleasure and
misery, of the rankest poverty and most plethoric wealth--at once
formless, sprawling, ugly, vicious, while magnificent in intelligence,
in vitality, in display, as in actual area and bulk. On the other
hand, and in the eyes of the majority phantasmal as a city of dreams,
was Holy Church, austere, restrictive, demanding much yet promising
little save clean hands and a pure heart, until the long and difficult
road is traversed which--as she declares--leads to the light on the
far horizon and beyond to the presence of God.

"If one could be certain of that last, then all would be simple and
easy," Iglesias said to himself, looking out over the turbulence of
the streets to the pallid menace of the western sky. "But it is in the
nature of things, that one cannot be certain. Certainty, whether for
good or evil, can only come after the event. One must take the risk.
And the risk is great, almost appallingly great."

For just then there awoke and cried in him all the repressed and
frustrated pride of a man's life--lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes,
overweening ambition of power and place, of cruelty even, of gross
licence and debauch. For the moment he ceased to be an individual,
limited by time and circumstances, and became, in desire, the
possessor of the passions and reckless curiosity of the whole human
race. So that, in imagination he suffered unexampled temptations; and,
in resisting them, flung aside unexampled allurements of grandeur and
conceivable delight. Not what actually was, or ever had been, possible
to and for him, Dominic Iglesias, bank-clerk, assailed him with
provocative vision and voice; but the whole pageant of earthly being,
and the inebriation of it. Nothing less than this did he behold, and
drink of, and, in spirit, repudiate and put away forever, as at last
he pulled open the heavy swing doors and passed into the church.

Within all was dim, mist and incense smoke obscuring the roof of the
great dome, the figures of the kneeling congregation far below showing
small and dark. Only the high altar was ablaze with many lights, in
the centre of which, high-uplifted, encircled by the golden rays of
the monstrance, pale, mysterious, pearl of incalculable price, showed
the immaculate Host.

Quietly yet fearlessly, as one who comes by long-established right,
Dominic walked the length of the nave, knelt devoutly on both knees,
prostrating himself as, long ago, in the days of early childhood his
mother had taught him to do at the Exposition of the Blessed
Sacrament. Now, after all these years--and a sob rose in his throat--
he seemed to feel her hand upon his shoulder, the gentle pressure of
which enjoined deepest reverence. Then rising, he took his place in
the second row of seats on the gospel side, and remained there,
through the concluding acts of the ceremonial, until the silent
congregation suddenly finds voice--penetrated by austere emotion--in
recitation of the Divine Praises.

Some minutes later he knelt in the confessional, laying bare the
secrets of his heart.

Thus did Dominic Iglesias cast off the bondage of that monstrous
mother, London-town, cast off the terror of those unbidden companions,
Loneliness and Old Age, using and, taking the risks, humbly reconcile
himself to Holy Church.




CHAPTER XXIII


Good George Lovegrove wandered solitary in Kensington Gardens. He had
chosen the lower path running parallel with Kensington Gore, which
leads, between flowerborders and thickset belts of shrubbery, from the
Broad Walk to the railings enclosing the open space around the Albert
Memorial. This path, being sheltered and furnished with many green
garden seats, is specially nurse and baby haunted, and it was to see
the babies, whether sturdily on foot or seated in their little
carriages, that George Lovegrove had come hither, being sad. Thrushes
sang lustily from the treetops. The flowerborders grew resplendent
with polyanthus, crocus yellow, purple, and white, with early
daffodils, and the heaven blue of _scilla sibirica_. Above, here
and there a froth of almond or cherry blossom overspread the dark
twigs and branches, while a ruddiness of burgeoning buds flushed the
great elms. But babies of position, looking like tiny pink-faced polar
bears, still wore their long leggings and white furs, the March wind
being treacherous. They galloped, trumpeting, the clean air and merry
sunshine going to their heads in the most inebriating fashion. It was
early, moreover, so that they were full of the energy of a good
night's sleep, of breakfast, and of comfortable nursery warmth. And
George Lovegrove stepped among them carefully, watching their gambols
moist-eyed, nervously anxious lest his quaintly solid figure should
obstruct the erratic progress of toy-horse, or hoop, or ball. He
craved for notice, for even the veriest scrap of friendly recognition,
yet was too diffident to attempt any direct intercourse with these
delectable small personages, who, on their part, were royally
indifferent to his existence so long as he did not get in their way.
This he clearly perceived, yet for it bore them no ill-will,
preferring, as does every truly devout lover, to worship the beloved
from a respectful distance rather than not worship at all.

And it was thus, even as a large and dusky elephant picking its way
very gently through a flock of skippeting and lively lambs, that Mr.
Iglesias, entering the sheltered walk from the far end, first caught
sight of him. To Dominic, it must be admitted, babies, song-birds,
burgeoning buds and blossoms, alike presented themselves as but
elements in the setting of the outward scene--a scene sweet enough had
one leisure to contemplate it, touched by the genial vernal influence,
witness to nature's undying youth. But his appreciation of that
sweetness was just now cursory and indirect. His thought was absorbed
and eager, penetrated by apprehension of matters lying above and
beyond the range of ordinary human speech. For he was in that exalted
interval of a many hours' fast when the spiritual intelligence is
wholly alive and awake, the body becoming but the vesture of the soul
--a vesture without impediment or weight, a beautifully negligible
quantity in the general scheme of existence. Later reaction sets in.
The claims of the body become dominant; and the exalted moment is too
often paid for sorrowfully enough in sluggish brain and irritated
nerves. Dominic, however, had not reached that stage of the
tragi-comedy of the marriage of flesh and spirit. He was happy,
with the white unearthly happiness of those who have been admitted
to the Sacred Mysteries. And it was not without a sense of shock,
as of rough descent to common things, of pity and of regret, that he
recognised good George Lovegrove cruising thus, elephantine, among the
roystering babes. Then Iglesias checked himself sternly. To humble
themselves, remembering their own great unworthiness, to come down
from the Mount of Transfiguration to the dwellers in the plain, and be
gentle and human towards them--this surely is the primary duty of
those who have assisted at the Divine Sacrament? And so Iglesias went
forward and hailed his old school-fellow in all tenderness and
friendship, causing the latter to raise his eyes from pathetic
contemplation of those charming but wholly self-absorbed small human
animals, and look up.

"Dominic!" he cried. "Well, to be sure, you do surprise me. Who would
have expected to meet you out at this hour of the morning? I do
congratulate myself. I am pleased," he said. His honest face beamed,
his fresh colour deepened. As a girl at the unlooked-for advent of her
lover, he grew confused and shy. And Iglesias warmed towards him.
Whimsical in appearance, simple-minded, not greatly skilled in any
sort of learning, yet he had a heart of gold--about that there could
be no manner of doubt.

"Turn back then, and let us walk together," Iglesias said
affectionately. "It is a long while since we have had a quiet talk--
that is, of course, if you have no particular business which calls you
to town."

"I have no business of any description," he answered. "And between
ourselves, Dominic, since I lost my seat on the borough council, I
have had too much time on my hands, I think. It is beginning to be
quite a trouble with me."

"Is life too softly padded, too dead-level easy and comfortable?"
Iglesias inquired. "Are you beginning to quarrel a little with your
blessings?"

George Lovegrove became very serious.

"Yes," he said, "I am afraid you are right. As usual you have laid
your finger on the spot. I do reproach myself for unthankfulness
often. I know I have a good home, and everything decent and
respectable about me; more so, indeed, than a man in my position has
any right to expect. And yet I regret the old days in the city,
Dominic, that I do. I should enjoy to be back at my old desk at the
bank--just the little snap of anxiety in the morning as to whether
one would catch the 'bus; the long ride through the streets with one's
morning paper; the turning out with the other clerks--good fellows all
of them, on the whole, were they not?--to get a snack of lunch. And
then the coming home at night, with some trifling present or dainty to
please the wife; and a look round the greenhouse and garden afterwards
in your lounge suit; and hearing and retailing all the day's news, and
talking of the good time coming when you would retire and be quite the
independent gentleman; and the half-day on Saturday, too, taking some
nice little outing to Richmond or Kew, or an exhibition or something
of the sort, and then the Sunday's rest."

He hesitated and sighed, looking wistfully at the white-clad babies.

"If one had two or three of those little people of one's own it might
be very different--though I would never breathe a word of such a
thought to the wife. Females are so easily upset; and if it raises
regrets in us men, it must be much more trying for them, poor things,
to be childless. But where was I? Yes, well now the good time has
come--and I feel a criminal in saying so, but it appears to me to be
growing stale already, Dominic. It was better in anticipation than in
fact. I am an ungrateful fellow, that I am, I know it; but sometimes I
am inclined to ask myself whether all the things we set such fond
hopes on are not like that."

"No, not all," Iglesias answered, with a certain subdued enthusiasm.
"There are things--a few--which never grow stale. One may build on
them as on a foundation of rock. If they ever seem to fail us, to be
shaken and overthrown, it is an evil delusion, and the cause lies not
in them but in ourselves. It is we who fail, who are shaken and
overthrown through palsied will and feebleness of faith. They remain
forever inviolate."

"I suppose so," the other man said timidly. He was unused to such
vehemence of assertion on the part of his friend. He wondered to what
it could refer. His thought, carrying back to the evening at the
theatre, played around visions of distinguished amours. Then he
steadied himself to heroic resolve.

"I suppose it is," he repeated, "and that makes my conduct appear all
the more discreditable to me. My circumstances are too comfortable and
easy. It is just that. And so I take to fretting over trifles and
seeing slights and unkindness where none were intended." He looked up
at Iglesias, his squinting eyes full of apology and admiration. "Yes,
I am sadly poor-spirited and I have no excuse. I have been nursing a
sense of injury towards those to whom I have most occasion for
gratitude--the wife and you. Dominic, believe me I am heartily ashamed
of myself."

"Come, come," Iglesias answered, brought very much back to earth, yet
touched and softened. "My dear friend, you of all men have small cause
for self-reproach. In every relation of life--and our knowledge of one
another dates back to early youth--I have found you perfect in loyalty
and unselfish kindness."

George Lovegrove walked on for a moment in silence. He had to clear
his throat once or twice before he could command his voice.

"Praise from you is very encouraging," he managed to say at last. "But
I am afraid I do not deserve it. I have felt mortified lately
sometimes, and I am afraid envious. I--but after your last words I am
more than ever ashamed to own it--I have fancied that you were
becoming distant and that an estrangement was growing up between us.
Of course I have always understood, though we happened to be school-
fellows and in the same employment afterward, that your position and
mine were different. And I want you to know that I would never be a
clog on you, Dominic"--he spoke with an admirably simple dignity--
"believe me, I never would be that. Lately I have been troubled by the
thought that I had extracted a promise from you to remain at Trimmer's
Green. Now I beg of you most earnestly not to let that promise, given
in a moment of generous indulgence, weigh with you in the slightest,
if circumstances have arisen which point at your residing in a more
fashionable part of the town."

"But why should I want to go to a more fashionable part of London?"
Iglesias asked, smiling.

"Well, you see," the other returned, his face growing furiously red,
"it came to my knowledge, unexpectedly, that you have acquaintances in
quite another walk of life to ours--the wife's and mine, I mean. And
it would pain me deeply, very deeply, Dominic, that any promise given
to me, regarding your place of residence, should stand between you and
mixing as freely with those acquaintances as you might otherwise do."

They had come to the place where the sheltered pathway is crossed by
the Broad Walk--the upward trend of which showed blond, in the
sunshine, against the brilliant green of the grass and the dark boles
of the great trees bordering it. Here Iglesias paused. He was not
altogether pleased.

"I do not quite follow you," he said coldly. Then looking at the
guileless and faithful being beside him, he softened once more. Was it
not only more just, but more honourable, to treat this matter with
candour? "You are alluding to the lady who was good enough to send for
me the night you and Miss Lovegrove went with me to the play?"

"Yes," the excellent George assented in a strangled voice. He wanted
to know badly. He was agonised by fear of having committed an
indiscretion offensive to his idol.

"Set your mind quite at rest on that point then, my dear friend. Her
world is not my world and never will be. In it I should be very much
out of place."

Iglesias moved forward again, crossing the Broad Walk and making
towards the small iron gate, at the lower corner of the Gardens, which
opens on to Kensington High Street. But he walked slowly, becoming
conscious that he grew tired and spent. The glory of the spirit
dominant was departing, the tyranny of the body dominant beginning to
reassert itself. His features contracted slightly. He felt
unreasoningly sad.

George Lovegrove walked beside him in silence, his eyes downcast, his
heart stirred by vague tumultuous sympathy, his modest nature at once
inflamed and abashed, recognising in his companion the hero of an
exalted and tragic romance.

"Well, he looks it. It suits his character and appearance," he said to
himself, adding aloud--for the very life of him he could not help it--
"But she was very beautiful, Dominic."

"Yes," Iglesias answered, "she is beautiful and very clever and--very
unhappy."

The good George's heart positively thumped against his ribs. "And to
think of all the plans the wife and I have been making!" he said to
himself.

"If she wants me, she will send for me," Iglesias continued quietly,
"and I shall go to her at once, as I went that evening, without
hesitation or delay, wherever she may be. But," he added, "it becomes
increasingly improbable that she will send for me. I have not seen her
or heard from her since that night. And so, my dear friend, you
perceive that your kindly fears of having circumscribed my liberty of
choice in respect of a place of residence are quite unfounded. I have
no reason for leaving Cedar Lodge or altering my accustomed habits."

Iglesias smiled affectionately, as dismissing the whole matter.

"And now," he continued, "that little misunderstanding being cleared
up, will you mind my turning into the restaurant just here, in High
Street, for a cup of coffee and a roll? I have not breakfasted yet."

Whereupon George Lovegrove pranced before him, incoherent in kindly
remonstrance and advice.

"At 11 A. M., and after your severe indisposition at Christmas, too,
out walking on an empty stomach! It is positively suicidal. Where have
you been to?" he cried.

"To Mass," Iglesias answered, still smiling, though with something of
a fighting light in his eyes and a lift of his head.

His companion stared at him in blank amazement.

"To what?" he said.

"To Mass," Iglesias repeated. "I have been waiting for a suitable
opportunity to speak to you of this, George. I, too, have felt the
weight of enforced leisure. It has not been a particularly cheerful
experience; but it has given me time to read, and still more to think,
with the consequence that I have returned to the faith of my
childhood. I have made my peace with the Church."

They continued to walk slowly onward; but George Lovegrove drew away
to the further side of the path as though contact might be dangerous,
as though infection was hanging about. He kept his eyes averted, his
head bent.

"You do surprise me," he said at last. "I had not the slightest
inkling that you were contemplating such a step. I give you my word,
you have fairly taken away my breath. I do not seem to be able to
grasp it, that you, whom I have always looked up to as so mentally
superior, so independent in your thought, should have become a
Romanist--for that is your meaning, I take it, Dominic?"

"Yes, that is my meaning," Iglesias answered.

"You do surprise me," George Lovegrove said again presently, and in a
lamentable voice. "My mind refuses to grasp it. I would rather have
lost five hundred pounds than have heard this. I declare I am fairly
unmanned. I have never received a greater shock."

Iglesias remained silent. He was weary and sad. But he straightened
himself, trying to keep his gaze fixed steadily upon the far horizon
where dwells the everlasting light.

"It is presumptuous in me to criticise your action, perhaps," his
companion continued. "I never did such a thing before, having always
hesitated to set up my views against yours; but I cannot but fear you
have made a sad mistake. And if you were contemplating any change of
this kind, why did you not come into our own national English Church?"

"Very much because it is English and national, I think," he answered.
"In my opinion there is an inherent falsity of conception in
subjecting our approach to the Absolute to restrictions imposed by
country or by race, if these can, by any means, be avoided. Why hamper
yourself with a late, expurgated, and mutilated edition, when the
original, in all its splendour and historic completeness, bearing the
sign-manual of the Author, is there ready to your hand?"

Again Iglesias spoke with subdued but unmistakable enthusiasm. The two
friends had just reached the iron gate leading into High Street. Here
George Lovegrove stopped. He still kept carefully at a distance,
averting his eyes as from some distressing, even disgraceful, sight,
while his good honest face worked with emotion.

"I think if you will kindly excuse me, I will go no farther," he
faltered. "What you say may be true--I am sure I don't know. It is all
beyond me. But I should prefer not to talk any more about it until I
have accustomed myself to the thought of this change in you. Nothing
does come between people like religion," he added with unconscious
irony. "So I think, if you will kindly excuse me, I will just go away,
Dominic."

And, without more ado, he turned back into the Gardens.

The small polar bears, meanwhile, satiated with exercise, air, and
light, had begun to grow restive and fretty. Their stomachs cried
cupboardwards, and they were disposed to filch each other's toy horses
and hoops, and use each other's small persons as targets for balls,
thrown as bombs in a fashion far from polite. Anxious maids and nurses
hunted them homewards, not without slight asperity on the one part, on
the other occasional squealings and free fights. But upon the babies,
engaging even in naughtiness, George Lovegrove had ceased to bestow
any attention. He went forward blindly, cruising among them and their
attendants and smart little carriages, elephantine, careless where he
placed his feet, to the obstruction of traffic and heightening of
general annoyance, as sorrowful a man as any would need to meet. For
it seemed to him things had gone wrong, just then, past all hope of
setting right. His idol, light of his eyes and joy of his guileless
heart, has fallen from his high estate, discovering capacity of
playing the most discreditable and soul-harrowing pranks. Prejudice is
myriad-lived here on earth; and in George Lovegrove all the bigotry,
all the semi-superstitious, terror fostered by the accumulated
ignorance which generations of Protestant forefathers have bequeathed
to the English middle-class, reared itself, not only stubborn, but
militant. His thought travelled back to those barbarities of rougher
ages which are, in point of fact, more common to the secular than to
the religious criminal code; but which Protestant teachers, even yet,
find it convenient to put down wholly to the account of the Catholic
Church. Practically ignorant of the spoliation and persecution
practised under Henry the Eighth--of blessed domestic memory--of the
further persecution which disfigured the "spacious days of great
Elizabeth," not to mention the long and shameful history of the Penal
Laws, he fixed his mind upon lurid legends of the reign of unhappy
Mary Tudor, illustrated by prints in Fox's Book of Martyrs; upon
inquisitorial tortures, the very thought of which--even out of doors
in the pleasant spring sunshine--made him break into a heavy sweat,
and which, by some grotesque perversion of ideas, he believed to be
not only the necessary outcome of, but vitally essential to, the
practice of the Faith. Against this hideous background he set the calm
and stately figure of his beloved friend Iglesias--seeing him no
longer as the faithful comrade of more than half a lifetime, but as a
foreign being, an unknown quantity, a worshipper of graven images, a
participant in blasphemous rites, a believer, in short, in just all
that which sound, respectable, and godly British common sense cast
forth, with scorn and contumely, close on four centuries back. He was
frightened. His everyday, comfortable, jog-trot, little odd and end of
a local parochial suburban middle-class world was literally turned
upside down and inside out.

"And however will the wife take it--however will she take it?" he
mourned to himself. "To think we have been harbouring a Papist in
disguise! I dare not contemplate her feelings. She will be upset. I
must keep it from her as long as possible. And Serena, too, and Susan!
I don't know how I can face them. Females are so very eloquent when
put out. Of course I have known there was something wrong for a long
time past. I saw there was a change in him, and felt there was some
cause of coldness; but it never entered my head it could be as bad as
this. Oh! my poor, dear friend. Oh! my poor Dominic, perhaps I have
been overattached to you and this comes as a judgment. It would be
hard enough to have anything break up our friendship, but this folly,
this dreadful doting apostasy--"

He walked on blindly along the sheltered path between the flower-
borders, deaf to remonstrant nurses and scornful, beautiful babes
clothed in spotless white.

"If anything must come between us I would rather it was a woman," he
mourned, "ten thousand times rather, whoever and whatever she was,
than this."




CHAPTER XXIV


It happened on the afternoon of that same day that Eliza Hart, in
pursuance of her domestic avocations, had occasion to go into Mr.
Farge's room on the first floor to lay out a new coverlet on his bed.
When, as thus, compelled to enter the apartments of either of the
gentlemen guests of the establishment it was her practice to leave the
door half open, as a concession to propriety in the abstract and a
testimony to her own discretion in the concrete. The handsome mahogany
doors of Cedar Lodge, unhappily painted white by some vandal of a
former inhabitant, being heavy were hung on a rising hinge. Hence,
when half open, a space of some three inches was left between the back
of the door and the jamb, through which it was easy to get a good view
of the hall or the landing unobserved. Little Mr. Farge professed a
warm predilection for gay colours, and Eliza had selected the new
bedspread with an eye to this fact. It was of bright raspberry-red
cotton twill, enriched with a broad printed border in a flowing design
of lemon-yellow tulips and bottle-green leaves. The salesman, in
exhibiting it to her, had described it as "very chaste and pleasing."
Eliza herself qualified it as "tasty"; and had just disposed it, much
to her own satisfaction, upon the young man's bed, when her attention
was arrested by the tones of an unknown feminine voice in the hall
below. Shortly afterwards she heard Frederick, the valet's large
footsteps hurtling upstairs at a double, followed by a prolonged and
leisurely whispering of silken skirts. Here, clearly, was a matter
into which, for the reputation of Cedar Lodge, it was desirable to
look without delay. Eliza, therefore, moved to the near side of the
door, and, through the three-inch aperture afforded by the rising
hinge, raked the landing with a vigilant eye.

The door of Mr. Iglesias's sitting-room immediately opposite stood
open. In the doorway Frederick indulged in explanatory gesticulation.
While, slowly ascending the last treads of the stairs, was a lady of
unmistakable elegance, arrayed in a large black hat with drooping
plumes to it, a sable cape--the price of which, Eliza felt assured,
ran easily into three figures--and a black cloth dress in the cut of
which she read the last word of contemporary fashion. Arrived at the
stair-head the intruder stood still, calmly surveying her surroundings,
presenting, as she turned her head, a pale face, very red lips, and
eyes--so at least it appeared to the vigilant orbs of Eliza--quite
immodestly large and lustrous, melancholy and somehow extremely
impertinent, too. Then Mr. Iglesias emerged from his sitting-room, an
expression upon his countenance which startled Eliza. She very
certainly had never seen it before. For a moment the lady looked up at
him, as though silently asking some question. Then she patted him
lightly upon the back, and passed into the sitting-room hand in hand
with him, while Frederick with his best flourish closed the door.

"Well, of all the things!" cried Eliza, half aloud; and, oblivious
both of discretion and of the new raspberry-red cotton twill coverlet,
she backed, and sat, plump, upon the edge of the bed. Just then, as
she asserted in subsequently recounting this remarkable incident, you
might have knocked her down with a feather.

"Of all the things!" she repeated, after an interval of breathless
amazement. "And how long has this been going on, I should like to
know? So that is the reason of a certain gentleman's iciness, and his
stand-offish high-mightiness. Well, I never! And poor darling Peachie,
so trustful and confiding all the time; not that she need fear
comparison with anybody.--Bah! the serpent."

Nevertheless she was deeply impressed, and fell into a vein of furious
speculation as to who this unlooked-for smart lady might be. Then,
suddenly remembering the highly compromising nature of her own
existing position sitting not only in the lively little Farge's bed-
chamber, but actually upon his bed, she rose with embarrassment and
haste, and made her way downstairs to the offices--treading
circumspectly in dread of creaking boards--to interview Frederick. But
from that functionary she obtained scant information.

"Zee lady she ask for Mr. Iglesias. I tell her I go to find him. I put
her in zee drawing-room."

"Quite right, Frederick,"--this encouragingly from Eliza.

"But she no stay zere. She come again out quick. She not any name, not
any visiting card give; only write somezing, very fast, on a piece of
paper and screw it togezzer. Zen she not wait till I return, but
behind me upstairs chase."

So there was nothing for it, as the great Eliza perceived, but to
retire to the drawing-room, and--Mrs. Porcher happened to be out--note
the hour and, with the door discreetly half open, await the descent of
the intruder from the floor above.

"I can just catch darling Peachie, too," she said to herself, "and
draw her aside. To meet such a person unexpectedly, on the stairs or
in the hall, would be enough to make her turn quite faint."




CHAPTER XXV


Poppy St. John laid her hands lightly on Mr. Iglesias' shoulders and
smiled at him. She looked very young, yet very worn; and the corners
of her mouth shook.

"If you were anybody else," she said, "I believe I should give you a
kiss. But I am not going to, so don't be nervous, dear man. I'll be
perfectly correct, I promise you--only I had to come. I have been
good, absolutely tiptop beastly good, I tell you. I have washed the
slate. It is as clean as a vacuum, as the inside of an exhausted
receiver. And I feel as dull as empty space before the creation got
started."

Poppy shivered a little, putting one hand over her eyes, and resting
her head with its great black hat and sweeping plumes against Mr.
Iglesias' chest. And Iglesias quietly put his arm round her,
supporting her. The day had been full of experiences. This last,
though of a notably different complexion to the rest, promised to be
by no means the least searching and surprising. Iglesias steadied
himself to take it quite calmly, in his stride; yet his jaw grew rigid
and his face blanched in dread of that which might be coming.

"I have sent Alaric Barking about his business," Poppy continued
hoarsely. "Sent him back to his soldiering, helped to cart him off to
that rotten hole, South Africa. He is a smart officer, and he'll make
a name, if he don't get shot. And he won't get shot--I should feel it
in my bones if he was going to, and I don't feel it. I broke with him
more than a month ago. But I had to see him again to say good-bye,
this morning, before he sailed."

Poppy moved a step or two away, turning her back on Iglesias.

"And it hurt a jolly lot more than I expected. I don't suppose I am in
love"--she looked around inquiringly at him, as though expecting him
to solve the complicated problem of her affections. "It's not likely
at this time of day, is it? But I was fonder of Alaric than I quite
knew. He is a good sort, and we have had some ripping times together.
He had become a sort of habit, you know; and when you have knocked
about a lot, as I have, you get rather sick at the notion of any
change."

She stood, looking down, leisurely unbuttoning and pulling off her
long gloves.

"I don't know that I should have made up my mind to sack him in the
end, but that I wanted to please Fallowfeild."

Mr. Iglesias became very tall. His expression was hard, his eyes
alight. This the lady noted. She returned and patted him gently on the
back again.

"There, there, don't sail off on a wrong tack, my beloved fire-eater.
Fallowfeild was quite right. The game was up, really it was; and he
wanted me to walk out, like the gentlemanlike dog, so as to avoid
being kicked out. I always knew the break was bound to come some time;
and it's a long sight pleasanter to break than to be broken with,
don't you think so?--You see, Alaric has formed a virtuous
attachment." Poppy's lips took a cynical twist. "It was time, high
time, he should, if he meant to go in for that line of business at
all. The young lady is a niece of Fallowfeild's--a pretty little
girl, really quite pretty--I saw her that night we were both at the
play--all new, and pink and white, and well-bred, and _ingenue_,
and in every respect perfectly suitable."

Poppy looked mutinously, even mischievously, at Dominic Iglesias.

"Poor, dear old Alaric," she said. "I don't quarrel with him. His
elder brother's no children, and there are pots and pots of money.
That he should want to marry, and that his people should press it on
him, is perfectly natural, and obvious, and proper."

"But," Dominic asked fiercely, "if this young man, Captain Barking,
proposes to marry, why has he not married you--always supposing you
were willing to entertain his suit?"

Poppy flung her long gloves upon the table, unhooked her sable cape
and sent it flying to join them.

"Pou-ah! I'm hot!" she exclaimed. "I think I'll sit down, if you have
no objection. Yes, that chair, thanks--it looks excellently
comfortable. By the way, you've got an uncommonly nice lot of things
in this room. I am going to make a tour of inspection presently. It
pleases me frightfully to see where you live and look at your
possessions." She stared absently at the furniture and pictures.--"But
about my marrying Alaric Barking," she continued. "Well, you see--you
see, dear man, there is an inconvenient little impediment in the shape
of a husband."

As she finished speaking Poppy folded her hands in her lap. She sat
perfectly still, her lips pressed together, watching Mr. Iglesias over
her shoulder but without turning her head. He had crossed the room and
stood at one of the tall narrow windows, looking out into the bright
windy afternoon.

For here it was in plain English, at last, that underlying secret
thing which he had known yet dreaded to know. It begot in him an
immense regret and inevitable repulsion at admitted wrongdoing. He
made no attempt to juggle with the meaning of her words. Yet, along
with them, came a feeling of gladness that Poppy St. John would remain
Poppy St. John still; and a movement of hope--intimate and very
tender--since in this tragic hour of her history she had come directly
to him, asking comfort and sympathy. Dominic, cut to the quick by the
defection of the heretofore ever-faithful George Lovegrove, hailed
with a peculiar thankfulness this mark of confidence and trust.
Sinful, greatly erring, still the Lady of the Windswept Dust had
returned to him; and thereat he soberly, yet very deeply, rejoiced. In
truth, the sharp-edged breath of persecution he had encountered this
morning, while paining him, had braced him to high endeavour. The
Catholic Church, so he argued, must indeed be a mighty and living
power since men fear her so much. And this power he felt to be behind
him, sustaining him, inciting him to noble undertakings--he strong in
virtue of her strength, fearless through the courage of her saints,
able with the energy of their accumulated merit and their prayers.
Again, as on his way home that morning from hearing Mass, the spirit
was dominant, his whole nature and outlook purified and exalted by the
Divine Indwelling. To fail any human creature calling on him for help
would be contemptible, and even dastardly, in one blessed as he
himself was. Thus his relation to Poppy St. John fell into line. He
could afford to love and serve her well, since he loved and purposed,
in all things, to serve Almighty God best.

These meditations occupied but a few moments, yet Poppy's patience ran
short.

"Dominic Iglesias," she cried suddenly, sharply, "I am tired of
waiting."

He crossed the room and stood in front of her, serious but light of
heart.

"See here, it is all right between us?" she asked imperatively.

"Yes, all is perfectly right between us," he answered. "Your coming
gives me the measure of your faith in me. I am grateful and I am very
glad."

"Ah!" Poppy said softly.

She sat forward in her chair, making herself small, patting her hands
together, palm to palm, between her knees, and swaying a little as she
spoke.

"You see," she went on, "to be quite honest, I didn't break with
Alaric simply to enable him to marry and live happy ever after. Nor
did I do it exclusively to please Fallowfeild. It would take a greater
fool than I am to be as altruistic as all that. I always like to have
my run for my money. I--I did it more to get you back."

She paused and raised her head, looking full at him.

"And I have got you back?" she said.

"Yes," he answered, smiling. "I ask nothing better than to come back."

"Do you mean that you are prepared to take everything on trust--after
what I have just told you--without wanting explanations?"

"Friendship has no need of explanations," Iglesias said, with a touch
of grandeur--"that is, as I understand friendship. It accepts what is
given without question, or cavilling as to much or to little, leaving
the giver altogether free. Friendship, as I understand it, should have
honourable reticences, not only of speech but of thought; wise
economies of proffered sympathy. In its desire of service it should
never approach too near or say the word too much; since, if it is to
flourish and obtain the grace of continuance, it must be rooted in
reverence for the individuality of the person dear to it. This is my
belief." His bearing was courtly, his expression very gentle.
"Therefore rest assured that whatever confidence you repose in me is
sacred. Whatever confidence you withhold from me is sacred likewise."

Poppy mused a little, a smile on her lips and an enigmatic look in her
singular eyes.

"You're beautiful, dear man," she murmured. "You're very beautiful.
You're worth chucking the devil over for; but you'll take a jolly lot
of living up to. So see here, you're bound to look me up pretty
constantly just at first, for I tell you life is not going to be
exactly a toy-shop for me for some little time to come. You hear? You
promise?"

"I promise," Iglesias returned.

"And there's another thing," she continued rather proudly, "a thing
men too often blunder over--with the very best intentions, bless them,
only they do blunder, and that leads to ructions. Please put the
question of money out of your head once and for all. I have a certain
amount of my own, nothing princely well understood, but quite possible
to live on. It was to prevent his playing ducks and drakes with it
that I finally left the jackal of a fellow whom I married. Well, I
have that, and I have made a little more, one way and another."--Poppy
permitted herself a wicked grimace.--"Poor old Alaric used to tell me
I was a great financier wasted, that I should have been invaluable as
partner in their family banking concern--that's more than he'll ever
be, poor chap, unless marriage makes pretty sweeping changes in him.
Some of my sources of income naturally are cut off through the
cleaning of the slate. For I have been tiptop beastly good--indeed I
have, as I told you! No more cards, and oh dear, no more racing. But
no doubt Cappadocia will contribute in the way of puppies. _Noblesse
oblige_--she realises her duty towards posterity, does Cappadocia.
So I shall scrape along quite tidily. And then, as long as I keep my
voice and my figure, at a push there's always my profession.--You
hadn't arrived at the fact that I had a profession? Such is fame, dear
man, such is fame. Why, I started as a child-actress at thirteen; and
went on till the jackal made that impossible, like virtue, and self-
respect, and a decent home, and a few kindred trifles in favour of
which every clean-minded woman has, after all, a strongish prejudice."

Poppy's voice shook. She had much ado to maintain an indifferent and
matter-of-fact manner. Iglesias drew up a chair and sat down beside
her. She put out her hand, taking his and holding it quietly.

"There, that's better," she said. "I feel babyish. I should like a
good square cry. But I won't have one. Don't be afraid. The motto is
'No snivelling, full steam ahead.'--But as to the stage, I'm not sure
that won't prove the solution of most difficulties in the end.
Sometimes it pulls badly at my heartstrings, and I shouldn't be half
sorry for an excuse for taking to it again. It's a rotten profession
for a man, and not precisely a soul-saving one for a woman. But it
gives you your opportunity; and, at bottom, I suppose that's the main
thing one asks of life--one's opportunity. Too, your art is your art;
and if it is bred in you, you sicken for it. I was awfully glad that
night to see you at the play, though in a way it shocked me. It seemed
incongruous. Tell me, do you really care for the theatre?"

"To a moderate extent I do," Dominic answered. She wanted, so he
divined, to give a lighter tone to the conversation. He tried to meet
her wishes.--"I am not a very ardent playgoer, I am afraid. But at the
present time I happen to be involved indirectly in theatrical
enterprise. I am interested in the production of a play, which I am
assured will prove a remarkable success."

"You're not financing it?" Poppy asked sharply.

"Within certain limits I am," he answered, smiling. "An appeal was
made to me for help which it would have been cruel to refuse."

Poppy's expression had become curiously sombre, not to say stormy. She
got up and began to roam about the room.

"I hope to goodness the limits are clearly defined, and very narrow
ones, then," she exclaimed. "For my part I don't believe in talent
which can't find a market in the ordinary course of business. I grant
you managers sometimes put a play on which is no good; and sometimes
cripple what might be a fine play by doctoring it, in deference to the
rulings of that archetype of all maiden aunts and incarnation of
British hypocrisy, the censor; but they very rarely, in my experience,
reject a play which has money in it. Why should they? Poor brutes,
they are not exactly surfeited with masterpieces. The play which
requires private backing, though a record-breaker in the opinion of
its author, is usually rubbish in that of the public. And the public,
take it all round, is very fairly level-headed and just; you must not
judge it by the stupidities of the censor. He represents only an
extreme section of it, if at this time of day he really represents
anybody--a section which does the screaming sitting sanctimoniously at
home, getting its information at second-hand through the papers, and
never darkens the doors of a play-house at all. Moreover, you must
remember that the public is master. There is no getting behind its
verdict."

Poppy's peregrinations had brought her back beside Mr. Iglesias again.
She patted him on the shoulder.

"See here, my beloved no-longer-nameless one," she said. "Be advised.
Learn wisdom. For I tell you I've been through that gate if ever a
woman has. The jackal--I wish to heaven we could keep him out of our
talk, but, for cause unknown, he persistently obtrudes himself--he
invariably does so when I'm hipped and edgy--well, you see, he was an
unappreciated genius in the way of a dramatist, from which fact I
derived first-hand acquaintance with the habits of the species. What I
don't know about those animals is not worth knowing. They're just
simply vermin, I tell you. Their utter unprofitableness is only
equalled by their lunatic vanity. They imagine the whole world, lay
and professional, is in league to balk and defraud them. So don't
touch them, I entreat you, as you value your peace of mind and your
pocket. They'll bleed you white and never give you a penn'orth of
thanks--more likely turn on you and make out, somehow or other, you
are responsible for the failure of their precious productions.--Now
let's try to forget them, and talk of pleasanter subjects. These
obtrusions of the jackal always bring me bad luck. I'm downright
scared at them.--Tell me about your goods, your books and your
pictures. And show me something which belonged to your mother--that
is, if it wouldn't pain you to do so. I should like to hold something
she had touched in my hands. It would be comforting, somehow. And just
set that door wider open, there's a dear. I want to have a look into
the other room and see where you sleep."

For the ensuing half hour Poppy was an enchanting companion, wholly
womanly, gentle and delicate; eager, too, with the pretty spontaneous
eagerness of a child, at the recital of stories and exhibition of
treasures beloved by her companion. The lonely cedar tree, lamenting
its exile as the wind swept through the labyrinth of its dry branches,
moved her almost to tears.

"It is tragic," she said; "still, I am glad you have it. It's very
much in the picture, and lifts the sentiment of the place out of the
awful suburban rut. It's a little symbolic of you yourself, too,
Dominic--there's style, and poetry, and breeding about it. Only, thank
the powers, you differ from it mightily in this, that its best days
are over, while you are but in the flower of your age. And your rooms
are delightful--they're like you, too.--The rest of the house? My dear
soul, the manservant ushered me into a drawing-room, when I arrived,
the colours of which were simply frantic. I bolted. If I'd stayed
another five minutes they'd have given me lockjaw.--Now I must go."
She smiled very sweetly upon Mr. Iglesias. "I'm better, ten thousand
times better," she said. "When I came I was rather extensively
nauseated by my own virtuous actions. Now it's all square between them
and me. I'm good right through, I give you my word I am. If only it'll
last!"

Poppy's lips quivered, and she looked Iglesias rather desperately in
the face.

"Never fear," he answered, "but that it will last."

"Still you'll come and see me often, very often, till I settle down
into the running? It will be beastly heavy going--must be, I'm afraid
--for a long while yet."

Dominic Iglesias, holding her hand, bent low and kissed it.

"I will serve you perfectly, God helping me, as long as I live," he
said.

Five minutes later Mrs. Porcher, supported by the outraged and
sympathetic Eliza, watched, through the aperture afforded by the
rising hinge of the dining-room door, an unknown lady, escorted by Mr.
Iglesias, sweep in whispering skirts and costly sables across the
hall.

Passing out and down the white steps, Poppy, usually so light of foot
and deft of movement, stumbled, and but for Iglesias' prompt
assistance would have fallen headlong. At that same moment de Courcy
Smyth, slovenly in dress, with shuffling footsteps, crossed the road,
and then slunk aside, his arm jerked up queerly almost as though
warding off a blow.

"No, no, I'm not hurt, not in the least hurt," Poppy said
breathlessly, in response to Iglesias' inquiry. "But it's given me a
bad fright. I'll go straight home. Put me into the first hansom you
see.--No, I'll go by myself. I'd far rather. I give you my word I'm
not hurt; but I've a lot of things to think about--I want to be alone.
I want to be quiet. Come soon. I was very happy. Good-bye--
good-night."




CHAPTER XXVI


A featureless landscape of the brand of ugliness peculiar to the
purlicus of a great city, to that intermediate region where the
streets have ended and the country has not yet fairly begun. A waste
of cabbagefields--the dark lumpy earth between the rows of yellowish
stumps strewn with ill-smelling refuse of decaying leaves--seen
through the rents in a broken, unkempt, quickset hedge. Running
parallel with the said hedge, shiny blacktarred palings, shutting off
all view of the river. Between these barriers, a long stretch of drab-
coloured high road, flanked by slightly raised footpaths, a verge of
coarse weedy grass to them in which a litter of rags, torn posters,
and much other unloveliness found harbourage. To the northwest and
north, a sky piled to the zenith with mountainous swiftly moving
clouds, inky, blue-purple, wildly white, from out the torn bosoms of
which rushed, now and again, flurrying showers of hail and sleet
driven by a shrieking wind. March was in the act of asserting its
proverbial privilege of "going out like a lion"; but the lion, as seen
in this particular perspective, was a frankly ignoble and ill-
conditioned beast.

And Poppy St. John, heading up against wind and weather along the
left-hand footpath, felt frankly ignoble and ill-conditioned, too. Her
poor soul, which had made such valiant efforts to spread its wings and
fly heavenward--a form of exercise sadly foreign to its habit--
crawled, once more, soiled and mud-bespattered, along the common
thoroughfare of life. At this degradation, her heart overflowed with
bitterness and disgust, let alone the blind rage which possessed her,
as of some trapped creature frustrated in escape. She had broken gaol,
as she fondly imagined, and secured liberty. Not a bit of it! In the
hour of reconciliation, of sweetest security, she met her gaoler face
to face and heard the key grind in the lock.

Save for the occasional passing of a market waggon, or high-shouldered
scavenger's cart, the road was deserted. Once a low-hung two-wheeled
vehicle rattled by, on which, insufficiently covered by sacking, lay a
dead horse, the great head swinging ghastly over the slanting tail-
board, the legs sticking out stark in front. A man, perched sideways
on the carcass, swore at the rickety crock he was driving, and lashed
it under the belly with a short-handled heavy-thonged whip. He was
collarless, and the scarlet and orange handkerchief, knotted about his
throat, had got shifted, the ends of it streaming out behind him as he
lifted his arm and swayed his whole body madly using his whip. Poppy
shut her eyes, sickened by the sound and sight. Just then a scourging
storm of sleet struck her, causing her to turn her back and pause,
where a curve in the range of paling offered some slight shelter. For
strong though she was, and well furnished against the inclement
weather in a thick coaching coat, buttoned up to her chin and down to
her feet, her cloth cap tied on with a thick veil, the stinging wind
and sleet were almost more than she could face. Her depression was not
physical merely, but moral likewise. For over and above her personal
and private sources of trouble, it was a day and place whereon evil
deeds seemed unpleasantly possible. The swearing driver and dangling
head of the dead horse had served to complete her discomfiture; and
presently, the storm slackening a little, hearing footsteps behind
her, she wheeled round, her chin bravely in the air, but her heart
galloping with nervous fright, while her fingers closed down on the
butt of the small silver-plated revolver which rested in the right-
hand waist pocket of her long coat.

De Courcy Smyth was close beside her. Poppy set her lips together and
braced herself to endure the coming wretchedness. It was some years
since she had had speech of him--some years, indeed, since she had
seen him, save during that brief moment, twenty-four hours previously,
as she descended the steps of Cedar Lodge. Even in his most prosperous
days he had been unattractive in person, at once untidy and theatrical
in dress. Now Poppy registered a distinct deterioration in his
appearance. His puffy face, red-rimmed eyes, and shambling gait were
odious to her. She noted, moreover, that he was poorly clad. His grey
felt hat was stained and greasy; his ginger-coloured frieze overcoat
threadbare at the elbows, thin and stringy in the skirts. The soles of
his brown boots were splayed, the upper leathers seamed and cracked.
This might denote poverty. It might, also, only denote carelessness
and sloth. In any case, it failed to move her to pity, provoking in
her uncontrollable irritation; so that, forgetful of diplomacy,
stirred by memories of innumerable kindred provocations in the past,
Poppy spoke without preamble, asking him sharply as he joined her:

"Have you no better clothes than that?"

Smyth paused before answering, looking her up and down furtively yet
deliberately, wiping the wet of his beard and face, meanwhile, with a
frayed green silk pocket-handkerchief.

"It offends your niceness that your husband should dress like a tramp,
does it?" he said hoarsely. "And pray whose fault is it that he is
reduced to doing so? Judging by your own costume, you can easily
remove that cause of offence if you choose. It does not occur to you,
perhaps, that while you live on the fat of the land I, but for the
charity of strangers--which it is loathsome to me to accept--should
not have enough to pay for the food I eat or for the detestable garret
in which I both work and sleep? Under these circumstances I am
scarcely prepared to call in a fashionable tailor to replenish my
wardrobe, lest its meagreness should, on the very rare occasions on
which I have the honour of meeting you, offer an unpleasing reflection
upon your own super-elegance."

To these observations, delivered with a somewhat hysterical
volubility, Poppy made no direct reply. Surely it was cruel, cruel,
that at this juncture, when she had so honestly striven to refuse the
evil and choose the good, this recrudescence of all that was most
hateful to her should take place? Moreover, now as always, just that
modicum of truth underlay Smyth's exaggerated accusations and
perverted statements which made them as difficult to combat as they
were exasperating to listen to. For a minute or so Poppy could not
trust herself to speak, lest she should give way to foolish invective.
His looks, manner, intonation, the phrases he employed were odiously
familiar to her. She fought as in a malicious dream, to which the
squalor of the surrounding landscape offered an only too appropriate
setting. Turning, she walked slowly in the direction whence she had
come--namely, in that of Barnes village and Mortlake. There the quaint
riverside houses would afford some shelter and sense of comradeship.

"I am sorry to make you come farther out," she said, with an attempt
at civility.

"That is unexpectedly considerate," he commented.

"But it is impossible to talk in the teeth of this wind," she
continued, "and I imagine we're neither of us particularly keen to
prolong our interview."

"Excuse me, speak for yourself," Smyth interrupted. "I find it
decidedly interesting to meet my wife again. She has gone up in the
world, and climbed the tree of fashion in the interval. I have gone
down in the world, as every scholar and gentleman, every man with
brains and high standards of art and culture, is bound to go down
sooner or later, in this hideous age of blatant commercialism and
Mammon rampant. I don't quarrel with it. I would far rather be one of
the downtrodden, persecuted minority. But, just on that account, my
wife is all the more worth contemplating, since she offers a highly
instructive object-lesson in the advantages which accrue from allying
oneself with the victorious majority. See--"

A rush of wind and flurry of cold rain rendered the concluding words
of his tirade inaudible. It was as well, for Poppy was growing wicked,
anger dominating every more humane and decent feeling in her.

"Look here," she said, when the storm had somewhat abated. "I know
that sort of talk as well as my old shoe. Haven't I listened to it for
hours? For goodness' sake, quit it. It doesn't wash. Let us come to
the point at once without all this idiotic brag and gassing. You wrote
me a letter shouting danger and ruin. What did it mean? Anything real,
or merely a melodramatic blowing off of steam? Tell me. Let us have it
out and have finished with it. What do you want?"

The softening medium of a gauze veil failed to hide the fact that
Poppy's expression was distinctly malignant, her great eyes full of
sombre fury, her red lips tense. Smyth backed away from her against
the palings in genuine alarm.

"I--I believe you'd like to murder me," he said.

"So I should," Poppy answered. "I should very much like to kill you.
And I've the wherewithal here, in my pocket, and there's no one on the
road. But you needn't be anxious. I'm not going to murder you. The
consequences to myself would be too inconvenient."

As she spoke she thought of yesterday, of the renewal of her
friendship with Dominic Iglesias, and of all that he stood for to her
in things pure, lovely, and of good report. A sob rose in her throat,
for nothing, after all, is so horrible as to feel wicked; nothing so
hard to forgive as that which causes one to feel so. Poppy walked on
again slowly.

"What do you want?" she repeated miserably. "Be straight with me for
once, if you can, de Courcy, and tell me plainly--if there's anything
to tell. What is it you want?"

"I have my chance at last," he said hurriedly, "of fame, and success,
and recognition--of bringing those who have despised me to their
knees. I thought I was safe. But yesterday I found that you--yes, you
--come into the question, that you may stand between me and the
realisation of my hopes--more than hopes, a certainty, unless you play
some scurvy trick on me. I had to have your promise, and there was no
time to lose--so I wrote."

Poppy looked at him contemptuously.

"What does all that mean?--more money?" she asked. "Haven't you grown
ashamed of begging yet? I raised your allowance last year, and it's
being paid regularly--Ford & Martin have sent me on your receipts. To
give it you at all is an act of grace, for you've no earthly claim on
me, and you know it. From the day I married you I never cost you a
farthing; I've paid for everything myself, down to every morsel of
bread I put into my mouth. You, talked big about your income
beforehand, when you knew you were up to your eyes in debt. Well, in
debt you may stay, as far as I am concerned. I'll give you that
seventy-five a year if you'll keep clear of me; but I won't give you a
penny more, for the simple reason that I shan't have it to give. It'll
be an uncommonly close shave in any case--I have myself to keep."

"Yourself to keep?" Smyth snarled. "Since when have you taken to
wholesale lying, my pretty madam? That is a new development."

"I'm not lying," Poppy blazed out. "I am speaking honest, sober
truth."

Smyth laughed. It was not an agreeable sound.

"Is not that a little too brazen?" he asked. "Even with such a
negligible quantity as a deserted husband, it is a mistake to overplay
the part."

Then, frightened by her expression, he slunk aside again. But Poppy
did not linger. Slowly, steadily, she walked on down the rain-lashed
footpath.

"For God's sake tell me what you want--tell me what you want," she
cried, "and let me get away from all this rottenness."

"You do not believe in me," Smyth replied sullenly, "and that is why
it is so difficult to speak to you about this matter. You have always
depreciated my powers and scoffed at my talents. No thanks to you I
have any self-confidence left."

"All right, all right," Poppy said. "We can miss out the remainder of
that speech. I know it by heart. Come to the point--what do you want?"

"I was just filling in the sketch of the third act."

Poppy shrugged her shoulders and raised her hands with a despairing
gesture.

"Oh, heavens," she ejaculated, "a play again! Are you mad? You know,
just as well as I do, every manager Mill refuse it unread."

"It will be unnecessary to approach any manager. I go straight to the
public this time. I have the promise of money to meet the expenses of
two matinees at least. I have no scruple in accepting--it is an
investment, and an immensely profitable one--for I know the worth of
my own work. It is great, nothing less than great--"

"Of course," Poppy said. "But pray where do I come in?" Then she
paused. Suddenly she pieced the bits of the puzzle together, saw and
understood. Misery, deeper than any she had yet experienced,
overflowed in her. "Ah, it is you, then, you who are bleeding Dominic
Iglesias," she cried. "Robbing him by appeals to his charity and lying
assurances of impossible profits. You shall not do it. I will put a
stop to it. You shall not, you shall not!"

"Why?" Smyth inquired. "Do you want all his money yourself?"

"You dirty hound," Poppy said under her breath.

"I did not know of your connection with him till yesterday," Smyth
continued--in proportion as Poppy lost herself, he became cool and
astute--"though we have lived in the same house for the last eighteen
months. I supposed you to be in pursuit of larger game than
superannuated bank-clerks. However, your modesty of taste, combined
with your charming attitude towards me, might, as I perceived, lead to
complications. I ascertained how long you had been at Cedar Lodge
yesterday. Then I wrote to you."

Poppy stood still in the wind and wet, listening intently.

"For once," he went on exultantly, "it is my turn to give orders, my
fine lady, and yours to obey. If you interfere, in the smallest
degree, between Iglesias and me, I will call his attention to certain
facts, the appearance of which is highly discreditable to him. He will
pay to save his reputation, if he ceases to pay out of charity--not
that it is charity. He is making an investment of which, as a business
man, he fully appreciates the worth. If you interfere I will make his
position a vastly uncomfortable one. The women who keep Cedar Lodge
are as jealous as cats. It would not require much blowing to make that
fire burst into a very lively flame, I promise you."

"You live there, then?" Poppy said absently. "You live there?" live
there?"

"Yes," he answered. "Does that offend your niceness, too? Do you
consider the place too good for me? You need not distress yourself. I
have only one room, a small one--on the second floor immediately above
your friend's handsome sitting-room, but only half the size of it. The
floors are old. I can gather a very fair sense of any conversation
taking place below."

Poppy moved on again.

"May I inquire what you propose to do?" Smyth asked presently--"warn
your mature commercial admirer and compel me, in self-protection, to
blast his reputation, or hold your tongue like a reasonable woman?"

They had reached the end of the tarred palings. Upon the left the
quaintly irregular bow-windowed rose-and-ivy-covered houses of Barnes
Terrace--no two of them alike in height or in architecture--fronted
the road. Upon the right was the river, dull-coloured and wind-
tormented. A cargo of bricks, supplying a strong note of red in the
otherwise mournful landscape, was being unloaded from a barge; carts
backed down the slip to within easy distance of the broad bulwarkless
deck, horses shivering as they stood knee-deep in the water. The
bricks grated together when the men, handling them, tossed them
across. With long-drawn thunderous roar and shriek, a train, heading
from Kew Station, rushed across the latticed iron-built railway
bridge. Poppy waited, watching the progress of it, watching the
unloading of the barge. The one perfectly pure and beautiful gift
which life had given her was utterly profaned, so it seemed to her;
that which she held dearest and best hopelessly entangled with that
which to her was most degrading and abhorrent. And what to do? To be
silent was to be disloyal. To speak was to expose Dominic Iglesias to
dishonour and disgust far deeper than that which loss of money could
inflict. Poppy weighed and balanced, clear that her thought must be
wholly for him, not letting anger sway her judgment. Of two evils she
must choose that which, for him, was least.

"I will not give you away. I will say nothing," she said at last.

"You swear you will not?"

"Yes, I swear," Poppy said.

"I want it in writing."

"Very well, you shall have it in writing, witnessed if you like," she
answered. "The precious document shall be posted to you to-night. Now
are you satisfied, you contemptible animal? Have you humbled me
enough?"

But Smyth came close to her, pushing his face into hers. He was
shaking with excitement, hysterical with mingled fear and relief.

"I am not ungenerous, my dear girl," he whispered. "I am willing to
condone the past--to take you back, to acknowledge you as my wife and
let you share my success. There is a part in the new play which might
have been written for you. You could become world-famous in it. I am
not ungenerous, I am willing to make matters up."

"Do you want me to murder you, after all?" Poppy asked. "If you try me
much further, I tell you plainly, I can't answer for myself.
Therefore, as you value your life, let me alone. Get out of my sight."




CHAPTER XXVII


During the watches of the ensuing night, amid bellowings of wind in the
chimneys, long-drawn complaint of the great cedar tree, rattle of sleet,
and those half-heard whisperings and footsteps--as of inhabitants long
since departed--which so often haunt an old house through the hours of
dark, Dominic Iglesias' mind, for cause unknown, was busied with
reminiscences of the firm of Barking Brothers & Barking, and the many
years he had spent in its service. He had no wish to think of these
things. They came unbidden, pushing themselves upon remembrance. All
manner of details, of little histories and episodes connected both with
the financial and human affairs of the famous banking-house, occurred to
him. And from thoughts of all this, but transmogrified and perverted,
when, towards dawn, the storm abating, he at length fell asleep, his
dreams were not exempt. For through them caracoled, in grotesque and most
irregular inter-relation, those august personages, the heads of the firm,
along with his fellow-clerks, living and dead, that militant Protestant,
good George Lovegrove, and the whole personnel of the establishment, down
to caretaker, messenger-boys, porters and the like. Never surely had been
such wild doings in that sedate and reputable place of business--doings
in which gross absurdity and ingenious cruelty went hand in hand; while,
by some queer freak of the imagination, poor Pascal Pelletier, of hectic
and pathetic memory, appeared as leader of the revels, at which the Lady
of the Windswept Dust, sad-eyed, inscrutable of countenance, her
dragon-embroidered scarf drawn closely about her shoulders, looked on.

Dominic arose from his brief uneasy slumbers anxious and unrefreshed. The
phantasmagoria of his dream had been so living, so vivid, that it was
difficult to throw off the impression produced by it. Moreover, he was
slightly ashamed to find that, the restraining power of the will removed,
his mind was capable of creating scenes of so loose and heartless a
character. He was displeased with himself, distressed by this outbreak of
the undisciplined and unregenerate "natural man" in him. Later, coming
into his sitting-room, he unfortunately found matters awaiting him by no
means calculated to obliterate displeasing impressions or promote suavity
and peace.

For the pile of letters and circulars lying beside his plate upon the
breakfast-table was topped by a note directed in de Courcy Smyth's nervous
and irritable hand. Dominic opened it with a curious sense of reluctance.
Only last week he had lent the man ten pounds; and here was another
demand, couched in terms, too, so bullying, so almost threatening, that
Dominic's back stiffened considerably.

Smyth requested, or rather commanded, that fifty pounds should be
delivered to him without delay. "It was conceivable that Mr. Iglesias had
not that amount by him in notes. But, since he had really nothing to do,
it would be a little occupation for him to go and procure them." Smyth
insisted the money should be paid in a lump sum, adding that, his time
being as valuable as Iglesias' was worthless, he could not reasonably be
expected to waste it in perpetual letters respecting a subject so
essentially uninteresting and distasteful to him as that of ways and
means. Such correspondence annoyed him, and put him off his work; and, as
it clearly was very much to Iglesias' interest that the play should be
finished as soon as possible, it was advisable that he should accede to
Smyth's present request without parley and pay up at once.

Reading this mandatory epistle, Dominic was gravely displeased and hurt.
Poppy St. John had warned him against the insatiable and insolent greed
of persons of this kidney. He had discounted her speech somewhat,
supposing it infected with such prejudice as the recollection of private
wrongs will breed even in generous natures. Now he began to fear her
strictures had been just. The egoism of the unsuccessful is a moral
disease, destructive of all sense of proportion. Those suffering
from it must be reckoned as insane; not sick merely, but actually
mad with self-love. Smyth, to gain his play a hearing, would beggar
him--Iglesias--without scruple or regret. But Dominic had no intention
of being beggared in this connection. Thrice-sacred charity is one story;
the encouragement of the unlimited borrower, the fostering of so colossal
a selfishness quite another. A point had been reached where to accede
to Smyth's demands was culpable, a consenting, indeed, to wrongdoing.
Here then was occasion for careful consideration. Iglesias gravely laid
the offensive missive aside, and proceeded to eat his breakfast before
opening the rest of his letters. In the intervals of the meal he glanced
at the contents of the morning paper.

The war news was unimportant. A skirmish or two, leaving a few more
women's lives maimed and hearts desolate. A lie or two of continental
manufacture, tending to blacken the fair fame of the most humane and
good-tempered army which, in all probability, ever took the field.
A shriek or two from soft-handed sentimentalists at home, who--for
reasons best known to themselves--are ardent patriots of every country
save their own. Such items formed too permanent a part of the daily menu,
during the year of grace 1900, to excite more than passing notice. At the
bottom of the column a paragraph of a more unusual character attracted
Iglesias' attention. It announced it had authority for stating that
Alarmist rumours, current regarding the unstable financial position of
a certain well-known and highly respected London bank, were grossly
exaggerated. No doubt the losses suffered by the bank in question had
been severe, owing to its extensive connection with land and mining
property in South Africa, and the disorganisation of business in that
country consequent upon the war. The said losses were, however, of a
temporary character, and had by no means reached the disastrous
proportions commonly reported. Granted time, and a reasonable amount of
patience on the part of persons most nearly interested, the storm would
be successfully weathered, and the bank would resume the leading position
which it had so long and honourably enjoyed. No names were given, but
Iglesias had small difficulty in supplying them. It appeared to him that
Barking Brothers must be in considerable straits or they would never,
surely, put forth disclaimers of this description. His mind went back
upon the dreams which had left such disquieting impressions upon his
mind. In the light of that newspaper paragraph they took on an almost
prophetic character. Absently he turned over the rest of the pile of
letters, selected one, the handwriting upon the envelope of which was at
once well-known and perplexing to his memory, opened it, and turned to
the signature to find that of no less a personage than Sir Abel Barking
himself.

During the next quarter of an hour Dominic Iglesias lived hard in
thought, in decision, in struggle with personal resentment bred by
remembrance of scant courtesy and ingratitude meted out to him. He
learned that Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking's embarrassments did, in
point of fact, skirt the edge of ruin. Their affairs were
in apparently inextricable confusion, owing to Reginald Barking's
reckless speculations, while, to add to the general confusion, that
strenuous young man had broken down utterly from nervous verstrain,
and was, at the present time, incapable of the slightest mental or
physical exertion. Things were at a deadlock. "Under these terrible
circumstances," Sir Abel Barking wrote, "I turn to you, my good
friend, as a person intimately acquainted with the operation of our
firm. Your experience may be of service to us in this crisis, and,
in virtue of the many benefits you have received from us in the
past, I unhesitatingly claim your assistance. In my own name and
that of my partners, I offer to reinstate you in your former
position, but with enlarged powers. It has always been my
endeavour, as you are well aware, to reward merit and to treat
those in our employment with generosity and consideration. You will
be glad, I am sure, to embrace this opportunity of repaying, in
some small measure, your debt towards me and mine." More followed
to the same effect. Neither the taste of the writer nor his manner
of expression was happy. Of this Dominic was quite sensible.
Patronage, especially after his period of independence, was far
from agreeable to him. Yet behind the verbiage, the platitudes and
bombastic phrases, his ear detected a very human cry of fear and
cry for help. Should he accede, doing his best to allay that fear
and render that help?

He rose, still holding the wordy letter in his hand, and paced the room.
Of his own ability to render effective help, were he allowed freedom of
action, Iglesias entertained little doubt--always supposing that the
situation did not prove even worse than he had present reason for
supposing. It was not difficult to see how the trouble had come about.
The senior partners, lulled into false security by lifelong prosperity,
had grown supine and inert. Sooner, in their opinion, might the stars fall
from heaven than the august house of Barking prove unsound of foundation
or capable of collapse! To hint at this, even as a remote possibility, was
little short of blasphemous. Their amiable nephew, meanwhile, had
regarded them as a flock of silly fat geese eminently fitted for plucking.
He let them complacently hiss and cackle, congratulate themselves upon
their worldly wisdom and conspicuous modernity, while, all the time,
silently, diligently, relentlessly plucking. Now, awakening suddenly to
the fact of their nudity, they were in a terrible taking; scandalised,
flustered, very sore, poor birds, and quite past recollecting that
feathers grow again if the system is sound and the cuticle health. To
Iglesias these purse-proud, self-righteous, middle-aged gentlemen
presented a spectacle at once pathetic and humorous in their present sad
plight. A calm head and clear judgment might do much to ameliorate their
position, and a calm head and cool judgment he was confident of
possessing. Only was he, after all, disposed to place these useful
possessions at their service?

For in the last nine months Dominic Iglesias' habits and outlook had
changed notably. The values were altered. It would be far harder to
return to the monotonous routine of business life now--even though a
fine revenge, a delicate heaping of coals of fire, accompanied that
return--than it had been to part company with it last year. Loneliness,
the emptiness induced by absence of definite employment, no longer
oppressed him. Holy Church had cured all that, giving him a definite
place, and definite purpose, beautiful duties of prayer and worship, the
restrained, yet continuous, excitement of the pushing forward of soul and
spirit upon the fair, strange, daily, hourly journey towards the far
horizon and the friendship of Almighty God. His retirement had become very
dear to him, since it afforded scope for the conscious prosecution of that
journey. Dominic's state of mind, in short, was that of the lover who
dreads any and every outside demand which may, even momentarily, distract
his attention from the object of his love. Threadneedle Street, the
glass and mahogany walled corridors, and the moral atmosphere of
them--money-getting and of this world conspicuously worldly--were not
these ironically antagonistic to the journey upon which he had set forth
and the habit of mind necessary to the successful prosecution of it? There
was Poppy St. John, too, and the closer relation of friendship into which
he had just entered with her. This must not be neglected. And, thinking
of her, he could not but think of that younger son of the great
banking-house, Alaric Barking, and his dealings with her--enjoying her as
long as it suited him to do so, leaving her as soon as his passion cooled
and a more advantageous social connection presented itself. Towards the
handsome young soldier Iglesias was, it must be owned, somewhat merciless.
Why should he go to the rescue of this young libertine's family, and
indirectly facilitate his marriage, and increase its promise of happiness,
by helping to secure him an otherwise vanishing fortune? Let him pay the
price of his illicit pleasures and become a pauper. Such a consummation
Dominic admitted he, personally, could face with entire resignation.

And yet--yet--on closer examination were not these reasons against
undertaking the work offered him based upon personal disinclination,
personal animosity, rather than upon plain right and wrong, and,
consequently, were they not insufficient to justify abstention and
refusal? That earlier dream of his, on the night following his dismissal
last year, came back to him, with its touching memories of the narrow town
garden behind the old house in Holland Street, Kensington--the golden
laburnum, the shallow stone basin beloved of sooty sparrows, poor, dear
Pascal Pelletier and his Huntley & Palmer's biscuit-box infernal machine
and very crude methods of adjusting the age-old quarrel between capital
and labour. On that occasion the lonely little boy, though at risk of
grave injury to himself, had not hesitated to save the ill-favoured
chunk-faced grey cat--which bore in speech and appearance so queer a
likeness to Sir Abel Barking--from the ugly fate awaiting it. He had
gathered it tenderly in his arms, pitying and striving to heal it. Was the
child, by instinct, finer, nobler, more self-forgetful, than the man in
the full possession of reason, instructed in the divine science, fortified
by the example and merits of the saints? That would, indeed, be a
melancholy conclusion. And so it occurred to him, not merely as
conceivable but as incontestable, that the road to the far horizon,
instead of leading in the opposite direction to the city banking-house,
for him, at this particular juncture, led directly into and through it; so
that to refuse would be to stray from the straight path and risk the
obscuring of the blessed light by a cowardly and selfish lust of the
immediate comfort of it.

He would go and help those distracted plucked geese to grow new feathers.
Only to do so meant time, labour, unremitting application, a wholesale
sacrifice of leisure; so he must see Poppy St. John first.




CHAPTER XXVIII


"I did not call yesterday," Iglesias said, "in consequence of your
prohibitory telegram. But to-day I have come early and without permission,
first because I was anxious to assure myself you were really unhurt, and
secondly because something has occurred regarding which I wish to
consult you. I must have your sanction before taking action in respect of
it."

Entering from the blustering wind and keen, fitful sunshine without, the
little drawing-room struck Iglesias as both stuffy and dingy. And Poppy,
standing in the centre of it, huddled in a black brocade tea-gown, a
sparse pattern of bluey mauve rosebuds upon it, which hung in limp folds
from her bosom to her feet, concealing all the outline of her figure, came
perilously near looking dingy likewise. The garment, cut square at the
neck, had long seen its first youth. The big outstanding black ribbon bow
between her shoulders and that upon her breast was creased and crumpled.
Beneath the masses of her dark hair her face looked almost unnaturally
small, sallow and bloodless, while her eyes were enormous--dusky
dwelling-places, as it seemed to her visitor, of some world-old sorrow.
Her face did not light up, neither did she make any demonstration of
gladness or greeting, but stood, one toy spaniel tucked under either arm,
their forelegs lying along her wrists, their fringed paws resting upon her
palms. Dominic had a conviction she had snatched up the little dogs on
hearing his voice, and held them so as to render it impossible for him to
take her hand. Less than ever, looking upon her, had he any mercy for
Alaric Barking. Less than ever did the prospect of spending weeks, perhaps
months, in shoring up the imperilled fortunes of that young gentleman's
family prove alluring to him.

"You were hurt," he broke out, almost fiercely. "You are suffering, and,
worse, you are unhappy. It makes me very angry to see you thus. I wish I
could reach those who are guilty of having distressed and injured you."

Poppy's face went a shade paler, and alarm mingled with the sorrow in her
eyes, but she made a courageous effort to patter as usual.

"You'd give them the what for, dear man, wouldn't you?" she said. "But you
would have to go way back in the ages for that, and get behind the
seed-sowing of which this gay hour is the harvest. Still, I love to see
you ferocious. It is very flattering to me, and it's mightily becoming to
you. Don't snore, Cappadocia. Manners, my good child, manners. All the
same, I wasn't hurt slipping on those gorgeous white steps of yours. Upon
my honour, I wasn't. But I had to go out yesterday afternoon, and I got
caught in one of those infernal hailstorms. It was altogether too cold for
comfort, and I feel a bit cheap this morning in consequence. That's why I
put on this odious gown. I always try to dress for the part, and the part
just now is dismality. From the start this gown has been a disappointment.
I counted on the roses fading pink, but the beasts faded blue instead. I
feel as if I was dressed in a bruise, and that's appropriate--for I also
feel as if I had been beaten all over. Merely the hail--I give you my
word. Nothing more than that. I'm never ill." Poppy paused, dropped the
little dogs on the floor. They cowered against her, looking up woefully at
her. "No, I don't want you," she said. "You're heavy. I'm tired of you."

Then she blew her nose, and, over the top of her hand-kerchief, looked
full at Iglesias for the first time.

"Well, what is it? What do you want my sanction for?"

Without waiting for his answer she swept aside, knelt down, crouching over
the fire, extending both hands to the heat of it, while her open sleeves
falling back showed her arms bare to the elbow.

"Tell me, and, if you don't mind, shove along. I own I am a trifle
jumpy--only the weather--but I need humouring, so shove along, there's a
good dear," she said.

Whereupon, in as few words as possible, Dominic unfolded to her the
contents of Sir Abel Barking's letter. As she listened, Poppy raised
herself, turned round, stood upright, her hands clasped behind her.

"Oh! that's it, is it?" she said. She looked less bloodless, more
animated, more natural. "I'm not altogether surprised. The poor old lads
have found out the cuckoo in their nest at last, have they? Alaric had a
notion Reginald Barking--not a nice person Reginald--I saw him once and
he looked a cross between a pair of forceps and a bag of shavings--I
didn't trust him--you don't, do you? Alaric had a notion this precious
cousin was making hay of the whole show. But it was utterly useless for
him to intervene. In the eyes of the elder generation he is the original
dog with a bad name, only fit for hanging."

Poppy paused, took a long breath, smiled a little.

"What do you think? Is it a very bad business?"

"I cannot tell till I have gone into details," Iglesias replied. He was
slightly put about by the lady's change of demeanour, by the interest she
displayed, by the alteration in her expression and bearing.

"And they howl to you to save the sinking ship?" Poppy continued lightly.
"Shall you go?"

"That is the question I have come to ask you."

"To ask me?" she said. "But, heart alive, dear man, where do I come in?"

"My duty to you stands before every other duty," Iglesias answered
gravely. "Those who have caused you sorrow and injured you, are my
enemies. How can it be otherwise? A member of this family--I do not choose
to name him--has, in my opinion, played a detestable part by you;
therefore only with your sanction, freely given, can I consent to be
helpful to his relatives."

The colour leaped into Poppy's cheeks, the light into her eyes, her lips
parted in pretty laughter; yet she still kept her hands clasped behind her
back.

"Ah! I see--I see," she cried. "But how did you contrive to get left
behind, most beloved lunatic, and be born five or six centuries out of
your time into this shouting, pushing, modern world which knows not
chivalry? Do you imagine this is the fashion most men treat women? Here
I am laughing, yet I could cry that you should come to me--me, of all
people--on such a lovely, fine, fanciful errand."

"My conduct appears to me perfectly obvious and simple," Iglesias replied
rather coldly.

"I know it does, my dear, and there's the pathetic splendour of it," Poppy
declared, soft mothering tones in her voice. "All the same we must keep
our heads screwed on the right way. So, tell me, will it be of any
personal advantage to you to help pull these elderly plungers out of the
quagmire?"

"None whatever."

"At least they will make it worth your while by paying up handsomely?"

"No doubt they will make me some offer, but I shall decline it," Iglesias
said. "I draw a pension. I will continue to do so. That is just. I have a
right to it in virtue of my past work. But I shall refuse to accept any
salary over and above that. I shall make it a condition that I give my
services. And that which I give I give, whether it be to king or to
beggar. To make profit out of my giving would be intolerable to me."

Poppy mused, her head bent, pushing away the tiny dogs with her foot as
they fawned upon her.

"Don't bother! you little miseries," she said, "don't bother! I'm busy
now. I've no use for you." Presently she glanced up at Mr. Iglesias, who
held himself proudly, as he stood waiting before her. "Do you care for
these barking people? Is it a question of affection between any of them
and you?"

"I am afraid not," he answered. "Ours has been a purely business
connection throughout. How should it be otherwise? The social interval
between employers and employed is not easily bridged."

"Stuff-a-nonsense!" Poppy put in scornfully. "They might feel honoured to
tie your shoe."

"Any attempt to ignore differences of wealth and station, which others are
pleased to remember, would be unbecoming," he continued. "Nor do I relish
condescension on the part of my social betters. It does not suit me. I
prefer to remain within my own borders. Still, there is the tie of long
association with these merchant princes and their undertakings, and this,
I own, influences me strongly. It would be shocking to me to witness the
failure or ruin of those with whom I have been in daily intercourse. Then,
too, there is a certain challenge in the present position which appeals to
the fighting instinct in me. If not altogether by nature, still by habit I
am a business man. Affairs interest me, and consequently the more
embarrassed and apparently hopeless the existing state of things is, the
greater would be my satisfaction in mastering the intricacies of it and
reducing them to order. These practical matters are not without very real
excitement and drama to those who have the habit of handling them."
Iglesias paused, and then added quietly, "But I am contented enough as I
am, and should not voluntarily have touched business again had there not
been another consideration over and above those I have enumerated--namely,
the plain obligation of right doing, whether the said doing be congenial
to one or not. This obligation is supreme, or should be so, in the case of
one who, like myself, has bound himself by definite acts of obedience and
self-dedication."

His expression had changed, taking on something of exaltation. He no
longer looked at Poppy, but away to the far horizon and the light thereon
resident.

And the Lady of the Windswept Dust was quick to realise this, though upon
what fair unseen object the eyes of his spirit did, in fact, rest she was
ignorant. Against it the vanity inherent in her womanhood rebelled. She
was piqued and jealous of the unnamed, unknown object which absorbed his
attention more than she herself and her friendship did. From the first
Iglesias had appealed to her very various nature in a threefold manner. To
the artist in her he appealed by the clearness of his individuality, his
finish of person and of feature, his gravity and poise--these last taking
their rise not in insensibility, but in reasoned will, in passionate
emotion held, as she had learned, austerely in check. He appealed to the
motherhood in her by his unworldliness, by his ignorance of base motives,
thus making her attitude towards him protective; she instinctively trying
to stand between him and a naughty world, to stand, too, between him and
her own too often naughty self. He appealed to the child in her by the
exotic and foreign elements in him, which captivated her fancy, endowing
him with an effect of mystery, making him seem to hail from some region of
legend and high romance. But the events of the last few days had been
far from beneficial to Poppy St. John. They had demoralised her, so that
the artistic, maternal, and childlike aspects of her nature were alike
overlaid by the bitterness, the cynicism, the recklessness engendered by
her unhappy childless marriage and the irregular life she had led. Poppy's
feet were held captive in the quicksands of the things of sense; her
outlook was concrete and gross. Finer instincts lit up but momentary
flickering fires in her, speedily dying out into the gloom begotten by the
deplorable scene of yesterday with her husband, and shame at the
conspiracy of silence into which, as the lesser of the two evils presented
to her, she had entered, remembrances of which, on his first arrival,
had made her feel unworthy and a traitor in the presence of Iglesias. This
demoralisation worked in her to rebellion against just all that which, in
her happier moods, rendered Iglesias delightful to her. His exaltation,
his calm, the mystery which so delicately surrounded him, the very
distinction of his appearance irritated her, so soon as she became
conscious that she was no longer the sole object of his thoughts. She was
pushed by a bad desire to force from him a more complete self-revelation,
to cheapen him in some way and break him up.

"Dominic Iglesias," she cried suddenly and imperatively, "you are a trifle
too empyrean. I don't quite believe in you. Be more ordinary, more
vulgarly human. For who are you, after all? What are you?" she said.

And he, his thoughts recalled from a great distance, regarded her
questioningly and as without immediate recognition. Her voice was harsh,
and the transition was so abrupt from the radiant land of the spirit to
the dingy realities of Poppy's drawing-room, her tired, black, bluey-mauve
patterned tea-gown, and her absurdly artificial little dogs. It took him
some few seconds to adjust himself. Then he smiled in apology, and spoke
very courteously and gently.

"Who am I, what am I, dear friend? Why this, I think--a commonplace, very
ordinary person who, long ago, in early childhood, by mournful accident,
for which it would be an impiety to hold those on whom he was dependent
responsible, lost his sight. Through all the years which men count, and
rightly, the best of life--when courage is high and the hand strong, and
opportunity fertile, circumstance as a block of precious many-coloured
marble out of which to carve fine fortune for ourselves and those we
love--he wandered in darkness, insecure of footing, missing the very end
and object for which earthly existence has been bestowed upon us mortals.
He was sad and homesick for that which he had not; yet ignorant of the
nature of his own loss, disposed to blame the constitution of things,
rather than his own incapacity, for that which he suffered."

"And then?" Poppy put in sharply. Listening, she had started to mock, the
cynic and worldling being hot in her, but, looking at the speaker,
somehow, she dared not mock.

"And then--recently--since I have known you in short, it has pleased
Almighty God by degrees to restore my sight."

Poppy regarded him intently, her singular eyes wide with question and with
doubt, her lips pressed together.

"I see--you have got religion," she said. "But do you seriously mean to
tell me that I--I--have had anything to do with that?"

"Yes," Iglesias answered. "You have had much to do with it. First by
love--for your friendship woke up my heart. Then by sorrow"--he paused,
divided by the desire to spare her and to tell her the whole of his
thought--"sorrow, when I came to know you better and value your character
and gifts at their true worth, because I saw noble things put to ignoble
uses, which of all pitiful sights is perhaps the most profoundly pitiful."

Silence followed, broken only by minute and reproachful snorings on the
part of Cappadocia and her spouse. The little dogs, sensible of neglect,
had become the victims of wounded self-love, that most primitive, as it is
the most universal, of passions throughout all grades of living things.
Poppy meanwhile turned her head aside, unable or unwilling to speak. Again
she blew her nose with complete disregard of the unromantic quality of
that action, then said huskily:

"I have cleaned the slate. I shall keep it clean." Her voice grew
steadier. A touch of malice came into her expression. "I like compliments,
and you have paid me about the biggest I ever had. It will take a little
time to digest. So I think--I think, dear man, I will not stand in the way
of your going back to the City, and saving the sinking ship--that is, if
the work won't be too hard for you?"

"No," he answered, touched by her more gracious aspect, yet slightly
confused. "I have had nearly a year's holiday and rest; I am quite equal
to work. But I am afraid the hours must necessarily be long, and that my
opportunities of coming to see you will not be very frequent."

"Perhaps that's just as well," she said, "while I am still in process of
digesting the big compliment."

Then impulsively she swept up to him and laid her hands on his shoulders,
looking him full in the face.

"See here, you thrice dear innocent, since you have mentioned that
terrible word 'love,' the complexion of our relation has changed somewhat.
Don't you understand, made as I am, I must fight seven devils within me if
I'm to continue to play fair with you, as I swore I would? And so, just
because you are so very much to me, I had best not see you too often until
I have settled down into my new scheme of life. In a sense Alaric was a
safeguard. That safeguard's gone."

She moved a step back, letting her hands fall at her sides, while her eye
grew hard and dark.

"And there are other reasons, brutal, unworthy, sordid reasons, why it is
wiser that you should not come here often at present. They did not
exist--at least I had not the faintest conception that they did--when we
last met. They have rushed into hateful prominence since. Don't ask me--I
cannot tell you. You must trust me, and you must not let my silence
alienate you. I can't be explicit, but I give you my word I am perfectly
straight. And you must not let your religion alienate you either. By the
way, what form of faith is it?"

"The faith of my own people," Dominic answered. "The faith of the Catholic
Church."

Poppy smiled.

"Then I am not so afraid I shall lose you," she said, "for that's the only
brand of religion I've ever come across which isn't too nice to reckon
with human nature as it really is. It can save sinners, just because it
knows how to make saints--and it has made them out of jolly unpromising
material at times, there's the comfort of it."

She held out her hand in farewell.

"Good-bye till next time. You've done me good, as you always do. Now, I am
going to re-study some of my old parts, just to get the hang of the whole
show again."

But the door once shut, she flung herself down on the broad settee, while
the tiny dogs, whimpering, crowded upon her lap.

"Poppy St. John, you're not such a bad lot after all," she cried. "But oh!
oh! oh! it's beastly rough to be so young, and have gone so far, and know
so much. There, Willie Onions, don't snivel. It's both superfluous and
unpleasant." She sat up and wiped her eyes. "Upon my honour, I think it
was just as well I gave Phillimore the little revolver last night, to lock
up in the plate chest," she said.




CHAPTER XXIX


It followed that Dominic Iglesias walked on across the common to Barnes
Station and travelled Citywards, solaced and uplifted in spirit, yet
greatly troubled by the idea of those newly arrived complications at
which the Lady of the Windswept Dust had hinted. He did not permit himself
to inquire what they might be. Doubtless she knew best--in her social
sense he had great confidence--so he acquiesced in her silence about them.
Still, as he reflected, it is not a little lamentable that even
friendship, the angelic relation between man and woman, should be
thus beset by perils from within and pitfalls without. Where lay the
fault--with over-civilisation and the improper proprieties resultant
therefrom? Or was it of far more ancient origin, resident in the very
foundations of human nature? Woman, eternally the vehicle of man's being,
eternally the inspiration of quite three-fifths of his action; yet, at the
same time, the eternal stumbling block and danger to the highest of his
moral and intellectual attainment! Mr. Iglesias smiled sadly and soberly
to himself as the train rolled on into Waterloo. In any case she remains
the most astonishing of God's creatures. It would be dull enough here on
earth without her, though, to employ one of Poppy's characteristic
phrases, "it's most infernally risky" with!

But once inside the bank, such far-ranging meditations gave place to
considerations immediate and concrete, Iglesias' whole mind being focussed
to arrive at the facts of the case. And this was far from easy. For alarm
stalked those usually self-secure and self-complacent rooms and glass and
mahogany-walled corridors; men looking up from their desks as he,
Iglesias, passed, with anxious faces, or moving with hushed footsteps as
though someone lay sick to death within the house. In Sir Abel Barking's
private room the drama reached its climax, panic sitting there sensibly
enthroned. Her chill presence had visibly affected Sir Abel, causing the
contrast between the overblown portrait upon the wall and the subject of
it to be ironical to the point of cruelty. For Sir Abel was aged and
shrivelled. His clothes hung loose upon him. Hardly could he rally his
tongue to the enunciation of a single platitude even of the most obviously
staring sort. The mighty, indeed, were fallen and the weapons of
wealth-getting perished! Yet never had Iglesias felt so drawn in sympathy
towards his late employer, for the spectre of possible ruin had made Sir
Abel almost humble, almost human.

"I am obliged to you for responding to my summons so promptly--yes, sit
down, my good friend, sit down," he said. "It is necessary that I should
converse with you at some length, and I refuse to keep you standing. Our
present position is inexplicable to me. Granting that my nephew Reginald
is unworthy of the trust we reposed in his ability and probity, there was
still our own judgment in reserve, and our own unquestioned capacity to
meet any strain upon our resources. That our confidence in these last was
misplaced is still incredible to me. I am completely baffled. The past few
months, indeed, with their reiterated discovery of difficulty and of loss,
have been a terrible tax upon my fortitude. Veteran financier though I am,
I own to you, Iglesias, there have been moments when I feared that I, too,
should give way. Only my sense of the duty I owe to my own reputation has
supported me." Sir Abel turned sideways in his chair. His eyes sought the
derisive portrait upon the wall, contemplation of which appeared to
reanimate his self-confidence somewhat, for he continued in his larger
manner, "Nor has the sting of private anxiety been lacking. My younger son
has been called away to the seat of war under circumstances of a
peculiarly affecting character. My earnest hopes for his future, in the
shape of a very desirable marriage, touched on fulfilment--."

But here Iglesias intervened. For his temper began to rise at the mention
of the loves of Alaric Barking. If the springs of Christian charity, just
now welling up so sweetly within him, were not to run incontinently dry,
the conversation, he felt, must be steadied down to themes of other
import. So he civilly but definitely requested Sir Abel to "come to
Hecuba," and to Hecuba the poor man, haltingly yet very obediently, came.
He and his ex-head-clerk seemed, indeed, to have changed places, so that,
before the end of the interview, Iglesias began to measure himself as
never before, to realise his own business acumen, his quickness of
apprehension, his grasp of the issues presented to him and his own
fearlessness of judgment. Whatever the upshot as to the eventual saving of
the credit of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking, Iglesias became
increasingly confident of his own power, and quietly satisfied in the
exercise of it.

And so it happened that, although tired in brain and body, his mind
weighted with thought, as were his arms with bundles of papers--which he
carried home for more leisurely inspection--Iglesias came rapidly up the
white steps of Cedar Lodge that night. He was buoyant in spirit, content
with his day's work, keenly interested in the development of it. Using his
latchkey he entered the square panelled hall silently--with results, for
revels were in progress within.

Dinner was over. Mrs. Porcher and the great Eliza, linked arm in arm,
stood near the dining-room door watching, while those two gay young
sparks, Farge and Worthington, inspired by memories of a recent visit to
the Hippodrome, played at lions. It was a simple game, still it gave
pleasure to the players. Clad in an easy-fitting dark blue "lounge suit,"
with narrow white cross-bar lines on it, an aged and faded orange
sheep-skin hearthrug thrown gallantly across his shoulders, Farge, on all
fours, with the mildest roarings imaginable, made rushes from under the
dinner-table at the devoted Worthington, who withstood his fiery onslaught
with lungings and brandishings of that truly classic weapon, the humble
necessary umbrella. At each rush the ladies backed and tittered, clinging
together with the most engagingly natural semblance of terror.

"Ha! caitiff wretch, beware!" declaimed Worthington nobly. "Only across my
prostrate corse shall you reach your innocent victims. Say, Charlie boy,"
he added in a hurried aside, "I didn't poke you in the eye by mistake just
now, did I?"

"Wurra--wurra--wurra," roared Farge. "Never touched me, Bert, by a couple
of inches--wurra."

But there the would-be ferocious animal paused, squatted upon its
haunches, pointing its finger dramatically towards the front door, thus
causing the whole company to wheel round and gaze nervously in the
direction indicated.

"Oh, Mr. Iglesias, how you did startle me!" Mrs. Porcher cried
plaintively, laying her hand upon her heart.

"Pardon me," he answered. "I had no idea the hall was occupied or I would
have rung instead of letting myself in. I must apologise further for being
so late, and for not having telephoned that I should be unable to be back
in time for dinner."

"We all know that there are counter-attractions, which may easily account
for unpunctuality," Miss Hart put in, with a toss of her head.

"Hush, hush, dear Liz," murmured Mrs. Porcher, while the two young men
made round eyes at each other, and de Courcy Smyth, leaning against the
balusters on the landing of the half-flight, announced his presence by a
sarcastic laugh.

Mr. Iglesias looked from one to another in surprise. He had been thinking
so very little--perhaps, as he told himself, insolently little--about all
these good people for some time past. Now he became aware of a hostile
atmosphere. For cause unknown he was in disgrace with them all. Possibly
they resented his indifference, possibly they were justified in so doing.
Hence he did not feel angry, but merely sorry and perplexed. He addressed
his hostess with increased courtliness of bearing.

"I hope I have not caused you inconvenience, Mrs. Porcher," he said. "I
was summoned suddenly upon business to the City this morning. The business
in question proved more complicated than I had anticipated, and I was
detained by it till late. This leads me to tell you, if you will forgive
my troubling you with personal matters, that I shall be compelled to go to
the City daily for some weeks to come. I shall not, therefore, be able to
give myself the pleasure of joining you at luncheon, or probably at
dinner, either."

"Indeed," Mrs. Porcher remarked. "This is rather unexpected, Mr.
Iglesias."

"To me wholly unexpected," he answered, "and in some respects unwelcome;
but it is unavoidable, unfortunately."

He bowed gravely to the two ladies and, ignoring the rest of the little
company, went on his way upstairs. At the half-flight Smyth stood aside to
let him pass; then, after a moment's hesitation, followed him.

"Mr. Iglesias," he said, "may I be permitted so far to presume upon our
acquaintance as to remind you that you received a letter from me this
morning requiring an answer?"

Dominic paused at the stair-head.

"Yes, I received it," he replied coldly.

"And you condescended to read it, so I venture to imagine, notwithstanding
that you were summoned on important business to the City. We are all
impressed by that interesting fact--vastly impressed by it, needless to
state. I specially so, of course, since commerce in all its branches, as
you know, commands my profoundest admiration and respect. Literature
and art are but as garbage compared with it--no one ever recognised
that gratifying truth more thoroughly than I do myself. Still, the
shopkeeper--I beg your pardon, financier I should have said--is not wholly
exempted, by the ideal character of his calling, from keeping his promises
even to poor devils of scholars and literary men such as myself."

Smyth swaggered, his hands in his trouser pockets, his glance at once
impertinent and malevolent, his manner easy to the point of insolence.

"I venture to remind you of my letter, therefore, and I may add I shall
feel obliged if you'll just hand me over those notes without delay."

"I read your letter," Iglesias answered. "It required consideration."

"Oh! did it, really? I supposed that I had expressed myself with perfect
lucidity. But if any point appeared to you to need explanation, I am
disengaged at the present time--I am quite willing to explain."
"Thank you," Iglesias answered, "no explanation is necessary on your part,
I believe, though perhaps a little is on mine. I must ask you to remember
that I promised to help you within reasonable relation to my means. What
constitutes a reasonable relation it is for me to judge, since I alone
know what my means are. I regret to tell you that your last demand greatly
exceeded that reasonable relation. I am therefore reluctantly obliged to
refuse it."

"To refuse it?" Smyth exclaimed incredulously.

"Yes, to refuse it," Iglesias said calmly. "When your play is ready for
production I am prepared to bear the cost of two representations, as I
have already told you. But I am not prepared to make you unlimited
advances meanwhile. To do so would be no kindness to you--"

"Wouldn't it?" Smyth broke out excitedly. "No kindness to me? Do you
imagine I want kindness, that I would accept or even tolerate kindness
from any man, and particularly from you? I offer you a magnificent
investment, and you speak to me as though I was a beggar asking alms in
the street. No kindness to me? This high moral tone does not become you in
the very least, let me tell you, Mr. Iglesias. Do you suppose I am such a
stoneblind ass as not to see what has been happening. Doesn't it occur to
you that I hold your reputation in my two hands?"

"My reputation?" Iglesias repeated, a very blaze of pride and indignation
in his eyes.

Smyth backed hastily away from him, with a livid face and shaking knees.

"No, no, Mr. Iglesias," he protested. "I was a fool to say that. But I am
utterly beaten by work and by worry. I do not deny that you have behaved
handsomely to me. But persistent injustice and cruelty have soured
me. Is it wonderful? And then to-night those blatant young idiots, Farge
and Worthington, have set my nerves on edge by their imbecility and
conceit, till I really am not accountable for what I say. I had better go.
We can talk of this at another time. I dare say I can manage for a day or
two, though it will not be easy to do so. However, I am accustomed to
rubbing shoulders with every created description of undeserved indignity
and wretchedness. I will go. Good-night."

Iglesias entered his sitting-room, turned up the gas, and looked round at
the orderly aspect of the place with a movement of relief. He ranged the
bundles of papers upon the table. If he was to master their contents he
would have to work far into the night, and the day had been a long one,
full of application and of very varied emotions. He stood for a little
space thinking of it all. The return to his familiar quarters at the bank
had affected him less than he had expected. He had not felt it as a return
to slavery.

"Thanks to the Church," he said gratefully, "which confers on her members
the only perfect freedom, namely, freedom of soul, freedom of heavenly
citizenship."

Then he thought of Poppy--thought very tenderly of that strangely
captivating woman of many moods! How clever she was, how accurately
she knew the ways of men! Her warnings regarding his dabbling in
matters theatrical, for instance, and charities to unsuccessful
playwrights.--And at that point Dominic Iglesias drew himself up short.
For, in a flash, the truth came to him that Poppy St. John's hated "jackal
of a husband" was none other than his fellow-lodger, de Courcy Smyth,
whose shuffling footsteps he heard even now, nervelessly crossing and
recrossing the floor of the room immediately above.




CHAPTER XXX


"I could not write, Rhoda, because of course I could not be sure
beforehand whether, when I came to London, I should really wish to see you
and George again or not." This from Serena, loftily and with rustlings.
"But as Lady Samuelson was driving in this direction to-day, and offered
to drop me here if I could find my own way back, I thought I had better
come, as I knew it was your afternoon at home."

"And I am sure for my part I am very pleased to have you come," Mrs.
Lovegrove replied, leading the way towards the seat of honour upon the
Chesterfield sofa. "I always do hold with letting bygones be bygones,
particularly as between relatives, when there has been any little
unpleasantness. And perhaps your calling will cheer poor Georgie up. He is
very tenacious of your and Susan's affection, is Georgie."

Here the speaker proceeded to swallow rather convulsively, pressing her
handkerchief against her lips.

"Perhaps I should be wiser to keep it all to myself," she added, not
without agitation. "But the sight of you does bring up so much. And I am
sorry to tell you, Serena, things are not as happy as they used to be in
this house."

The office of ministering angel was not, it must be conceded, exactly
native to Serena, her sympathies being restricted, the reverse of acute.
But, at a push, "curiosity has been known to supply the place of sympathy
very passably; and of curiosity Serena had always a large stock at the
service of her friends and acquaintance.

"I wonder why," she therefore observed in reply to her hostess's
concluding remark--"I mean I wonder why things should not be as happy as
they used to be?"

"I trace the commencement of it all to the time when you were visiting
here last November--not that I mean you were in any way to blame--"

Serena interrupted with spirit:

"No, pray do not connect anything which occurred then with me, Rhoda. I
think it would be most misplaced. After all that I have had to go through
I really should have thought it only delicate on your part never to refer
to what took place during my visit. I certainly should have hesitated
about coming here to-day if I had supposed either you or George would have
referred to it.--What dreadfully bad taste of Rhoda!" she added mentally.
"I believe I had better go. That would mark my displeasure, and teach her
to be more guarded with me in future. But then perhaps she has something
to say which I really ought to know. Perhaps it would be a mistake to go.
Perhaps I had better stay. I do not want to be too harsh with Rhoda."

The truth being that she actually itched to hear more. For, to Serena, her
wholly imaginary love episode with Mr. Iglesias represented the most vivid
of all the very limited experiences of her life. Her affections had not
been engaged, since she possessed no affections in any vital sense of that
word. But she had been flattered and excited.

She had seemed to herself to occupy a most interesting position, demanding
infinite tact. During the months which had elapsed she had rehearsed the
history of every incident, of every hour of intercourse, with Dominic
Iglesias, a thousand times; weighing each word, discounting every look of
his, indulging in unlimited speculation and analysis, until the
proportions of that which had occurred were magnified beyond all
possibility of recognition, let alone of sane relation to fact. To
herself, therefore, Serena had become the heroine of an elaborate
intrigue. This greatly increased her importance in her own eyes; and,
though she was studiously silent regarding the subject save in indirect
allusion, the said self-importance, reacting upon those about her, gained
both for herself and her opinions a degree of consideration to which she
was unaccustomed and which she highly relished. Never had Serena presented
so bold a front to her philanthropic and very possessive elder sister.
Never had she enjoyed so much attention in the small and rigidly select
circle of Slowby society, in which she and Miss Susan moved. Serena spoke
with authority upon all subjects, on the strength of a purely fictitious
affair of the heart. She is not the first woman who has made capital out
of the non-existent in this kind, nor will she probably be the last!
Nevertheless, she was very far from admitting the great benefit which Mr.
Iglesias had so unconsciously conferred upon her. She regarded herself as
a deeply injured person--irreparably injured, but for her own diplomacy,
admirable caution, knowledge of the world and self-respect.

"I am well aware it is a trying subject to approach," Mrs. Lovegrove
replied, with praiseworthy mildness. "And I am far from blaming you for
turning from it, Serena. I am sure it has weighed sadly on my mind and on
George's, too. Not that he has said much, but I could see how he felt; and
then a great deal has come out since. That is why I am so gratified to
have you call here to-day, and so will Georgie be. He has taken it
dreadfully to heart finding how we have all been taken in, and seeing how
wrong it must put him with you and with Susan."

"It is very proper that you should say that, Rhoda," the other observed
with condescension. "I think you owe it to me to express regret. I should
have been sorry if George had proved indifferent, for I have been very
careful in what I have told Susan. Of course, I might have spoken
strongly. I think anyone would admit I should have been quite justified in
doing so. But I wished to spare George. Mamma was very much attached to
him, and of course he was constantly with us in old days, before his
marriage."

It was significant of the wife's humble state that she received this
thrust without a murmur.

"Poor Georgie was too upset to tell even me for a long time," she
continued somewhat irrelevantly, "and you may judge by that how badly he
felt. He knew how shocked I should be, and that I should take it as such
an insult to the dear vicar, after all his kindness, that any friend of
ours whom he had talked to in this house should turn Romanist."

"Who? What?" cried Serena. She had determined to maintain a superior and
impassive attitude, but at this point curiosity became rampant, refusing
further circumlocution or delay.

"Why, Mr. Iglesias, to be sure," Mrs. Lovegrove answered, hardly
restraining evidences of satisfaction. The news was lamentable, no doubt;
but to have it miss fire in the recital of it would have made it ten times
more lamentable still. "And the worst of it was," she continued, refreshed
by the effect upon her hearer, "he kept it dark for we don't in the least
know how long. He mentioned no dates, and poor Georgie was too upset to
ask him. Of course it is well known how double Romanists are always taught
to be--not that I was ever acquainted with any. You never meet them out, I
am glad to think, where we visit. Still, that Mr. Iglesias, who was quite
one of ourselves, as you may say, so intimate and always appearing the
perfect gentleman, so open and honest--"

"Ah! there you are wrong, Rhoda," the other lady put in with decision,
while making a violent effort to recover her impassivity and superiority.
"You and George may be surprised, but I am not. I always had my suspicions
of Mr. Iglesias. I told you so more than once. At the time you and George
were annoyed. Now you see I was right. I am seldom mistaken. Even Susan
admits I am very observant. After his extraordinary behaviour to me I
should not be surprised at anything which Mr. Iglesias might do." She
paused, breathless but triumphant. "Have you seen him since all this came
out, Rhoda?"

"Oh, no. He has called twice, but fortunately Georgie was out walking. He
goes out walking a great deal now, does Georgie." The speaker heaved a
voluminous sigh. Her satisfaction had been short-lived. "And I told the
girl, if Mr. Iglesias asked for me, to say I was particularly engaged. He
has written to Georgie. I know that--a long letter--but I have not been
asked to read it."

Mrs. Lovegrove pressed her handkerchief against her lips again, agitation
gaining her.

"After all these years of marriage, you know, Serena, it is a very cutting
thing to have any concealment between me and Georgie. I should not mention
it to you but that you were here when it commenced. I never supposed--no,
never, never--there could be any coldness between him and me. When I have
heard others speak of trouble with their husbands, I have always pitied
the poor things from my heart, but held them mainly responsible. Now I
think differently--"

"Miss Eliza Hart, mum." This shrilly from the little house-parlourmaid.

Serena rose as well as her hostess. Superiority counselled departure;
curiosity urged remaining.

"Of course, I should feel justified in staying if Rhoda pressed me to do
so," she said to herself. And Rhoda, in the very act of greeting her new
guest, did press her to do so.

"Surely you are not leaving yet?" she said plaintively.

"It would hurt me not to have you stay to tea, and Georgie would be sadly
disappointed to think he had missed you."

Thus admonished, Serena graciously consented to remain Miss Hart, as last
arrival, being necessarily invited to assume the place of honour upon the
sofa, Serena selected a chair at as great a distance from that historic
article of furniture as the exigencies of conversation permitted. "I must
show her that I stay not to see her, but solely on Georgie's account," she
commented inwardly. "I have been very cold in manner. I think she must
have observed that."

But the great Eliza was in a militant humour, not easily abashed. She had
called with intentions, in the interests of which she plunged volubly into
talk.

"You will excuse my coming without Peachie Porcher, Mrs. Lovegrove," she
began. "She was all anxiety to come, too, fearing you might think her
neglectful. But I prevented it. She overrates her strength, does Peachie,
and to-day her neuralgia is cruel. 'I'll run across and account for you,'
I said to her. 'You just lie down and take a nap, and let the housemaid
bring you up a little something with your tea, and take it early.' 'It's
not more nourishment I require, but less worry, Liz dear,' she said. And
so it is, Mrs. Lovegrove."

"We all have our troubles, Miss Hart, and often unsuspected ones which
call for silence."

The wife's large cheeks quivered ominously, while Serena rustled--but
whether in sympathetic agreement with the sentiments expressed by the last
speaker, or in protest against the presence of the former one, it would be
difficult to determine.

"I wonder whether that is not best, Rhoda--I mean I wonder whether it is
not best to be silent," she remarked reflectively. "I think people are not
usually half cautious enough what they tell. So many disagreeables can be
avoided if you are really on your guard. Mamma impressed that upon us when
we were children. I am very careful, but I often think Susan is hardly
careful enough. Most troubles arise through trusting other people too
much."

"And that's poor darling Peachie all over," Miss Hart declared, with a
fine appreciation of opportunity. "Too great trustfulness has been her
worst fault, as I always tell her, the generous pet. Not that all our
gentlemen are ungrateful, Mrs. Lovegrove. I would not have you suppose
that. Poor Mr. Smyth, for instance, whom I'm afraid I have accused of
being very surly and bearish at times, has come out wonderfully lately.
But it must be a hard nature, indeed, which Peachie's influence would not
soften. One such nature I am acquainted with." Eliza paused, looking from
one to other of her hearers with much meaning. "But it is not the case
with poor Mr. Smyth. He has yielded. Then there is the tie of an
unfortunate domestic past between him and Peachie, which helps to bring
them together.--Of course that means nothing to you, Mrs. Lovegrove."

The lady addressed swallowed convulsively.

"But all are not blessed with such good fortune as yours," the great Eliza
continued. "Mr. Smyth has been very open with Peachie recently. He has
some surprising tales to tell, knowing very well all that is going on in
society. And that reminds me of a certain gentleman who does not live a
thousand miles from here. Mr. Smyth has hinted at much that is very
startling in that direction."

The speaker paused again.

"Would it be intrusive to ask whether you have been favoured with much of
Mr. Iglesias' company during the last few weeks, Mrs. Lovegrove?" she
added.

Ruddy mottlings bespread the wife's kindly countenance. Serena moved
slightly upon her chair. She was conscious, of growing excitement.

"Perhaps not quite so much as formerly; but then Mr. Lovegrove has been
out walking most evenings. The warmer weather always causes him to feel
the need of exercise," the excellent woman returned, putting heroic
restraint upon herself. "And I have been very occupied with the spring
cleaning. I make it a duty to look into everything myself, you know, Miss
Hart. Not but what my girls are very good. I think all the talk about
trouble with the servants is very much exaggerated. Our cook, Fanny, has
been with us quite a number of years. Still, I hold it is well for them to
have a mistress's supervision if the cleaning is to be thorough. If you
see to it yourself, then you can have nobody to blame. And so I have had
frequently to deny myself to visitors."

She gave a sigh of relief, trusting she had loyally steered the
conversation into safer channels. But the great Eliza was not thus to be
thwarted.

"I asked on Peachie Porcher's account," she declared, "not on my own, Mrs.
Lovegrove. It is all of less than no consequence to me, except for the
sake of Cedar Lodge, how a certain gentleman spends his time. But
Peachie's interests must be protected. With an establishment such as ours
a good name is everything. 'You cannot be too particular; for any talk of
fastness, and the place must go down,' as she says to me--"

But here, the wife's natural rectitude and sense of justice triumphed over
prejudice and wounded sensibilities.

"I am sure I could never believe anyone would have occasion to accuse Mr.
Iglesias of fastness," she said. "Of course, the change of religion is
dreadful, particularly in one who should have known better, though a
foreigner, having had the advantage of being brought up in England. Nobody
can be more aware of that than myself and Mr. Lovegrove. It has been a
sad grief to us"--her voice quavered--"and no doubt early rising and fish
meals do make a lot of work and unpleasantness in a house-hold. But as to
fastness, well, Miss Hart, I cannot find it in my conscience to agree to
anything as bad as that."

With preternatural solemnity the great Eliza shook her head.

"Seeing is believing, Mrs. Lovegrove," she replied. "And when ladies call,
dressed in the tiptop of the fashion! Very stylish, no doubt, but not
quite the style Peachie Porcher can countenance, circumstanced as we are
with our gentlemen guests. Then there is what Mr. Smyth hinted at
subsequently, just in a friendly way. He did not say he was actually
acquainted with the lady, but intimated that he could say very much more
if he chose. No, Mrs. Lovegrove, I regret to speak, knowing how long you
and a certain gentleman have been acquainted, but there can be no question
Peachie Porcher's interests have been trifled with, and her affections
also."

Here aggressive rustlings on the part of Serena arrested the flow of Miss
Hart's eloquence.

"You spoke, I believe, Miss Lovegrove?" she inquired.

"No, I did not speak," Serena cried.--"Vulgar, designing person, what
presumption!" she cried to herself. "Anyone would feel insulted by her
manner. She thinks she has put me at a disadvantage. But she is mistaken.
I know more than she supposes." She was greatly enraged; for, unreasonable
though it may appear, if trifling were about on the part of Dominic
Iglesias, Serena reserved to herself a monopoly in respect of it. Few
things, perhaps, are more galling to a woman than the assertion that a
Lovelace has been guilty of misleading attentions to others besides
herself. If she is not the solitary object of his affections, let her at
least be the solitary victim of his perfidy. And that Mrs. Porcher should
aspire to share her _role_ of betrayed one was, to Serena, a piece of
unheard-of impertinence. She refused to bestow further attention upon Miss
Hart, and turned haughtily to her hostess.

"Have you any idea when George will be in, Rhoda? I am quite willing to
wait a reasonable time for him, but I cannot be expected to wait
indefinitely. I must consider Lady Samuelson. It is a long distance to
Ladbroke Square--of course Trimmer's Green is very far out--and I have
to dress for dinner. Everything is very well done at Lady Samuelson's, and
she makes a great point of punctuality. Of course it is no difficulty to
me to be punctual. I was brought up to be so. Mamma was always extremely
particular about our being in time. She said it was very rude to be late.
I think it is rude, and so, of course, punctuality is quite natural to me.
But I do object to being hurried; and so, unless George is likely to be in
almost directly, I really must go, Rhoda."

"I should be very mortified to have you leave before he comes back. It
would be a sore disappointment to Georgie to find you had been here and he
had missed you," the good creature pleaded.

"And it's something quite new for Mr. Lovegrove to be out on your at-home
day, isn't it?" Eliza put in, not without covert sarcasm. "I never
remember to have known it happen before."

"Mrs. and Miss Ballard, please, mum"--this from the house-parlourmaid.

Mrs. Lovegrove arose with alacrity, retail trade and nonconformity alike
forgiven.

"I am afraid Miss Hart grows very spiteful," she said to herself. "I wish
she would go. I should be vexed to have her outsit Serena.--Well, Mrs.
Ballard, very pleased, I am sure, to see you"--this aloud--"and your
daughter, too. The spring is coming on nicely, is it not? Quite warm this
afternoon, walking? I dare say it is. You and my husband's cousin, Miss
Lovegrove, have met, I believe? Miss Ballard, Miss Lovegrove.--Are you
going, Miss Hart? Kind regards to Mrs. Porcher, and sincere hopes she may
soon lose her neuralgia. Very trying complaint, Mrs. Ballard, is it
not?--and very prevalent, so they tell me, this year.--Why, you're never
going to leave, too, Serena? You'll come again, or Georgie will be so
troubled."

But Serena held out small hope of her reappearance.

"Of course I should be glad to see George, but I could not bind myself to
anything, Rhoda. You see, Lady Samuelson"--the Ballard ladies, mother and
daughter, looked at one another, fluttered and impressed--"Lady
Samuelson," Serena repeated, her voice rising a little, "has such a number
of engagements, and of course if she wishes to take me with her I cannot
refuse. At home she always likes me to help entertain. I really have very
little time to call my own, and so I should not feel justified in making
any promise. Of course it was just a chance my being able to come to-day.
You can tell George I am sorry not to have seen him. I should like him to
know that I am sorry."

"You are very kind, Serena," the other said humbly.

"I think Rhoda has improved," Serena said to herself, as she walked across
Trimmer's Green between the black iron railings. "I think she has more
sense of my position than she did. I wonder whether she thinks that if Mr.
Iglesias had proposed I should have accepted him. Of course she thinks I
was very badly treated. I think her manner shows that. Certainly she took
his part rather against that odious Miss Hart. But I don't believe she
really sided with him. I think she only appeared to do so to snub Miss
Hart. Of course if she had stayed, I should have had to stay, too. I
should have owed it to myself to do so. But, as she went, there was no
object in staying; and it was wiser to seem quite indifferent about seeing
George. I hope he won't attempt to call upon me at Lady Samuelson's! I
should hardly think he would presume to do that. I must tell the butler,
if a gentleman calls, to say I am not at home. If it was only George it
would not so much matter, but I could not run the chance of having Lady
Samuelson and Rhoda meet. It would not do at all to have Rhoda climbing
into society through me. I think it is too bad to have people make use of
you like that. And Rhoda has no tact. I see I must be on my guard with
George and Rhoda. I wonder whether I had better tell Susan Mr. Iglesias
has become a Roman Catholic? Of course she would think I had had a great
escape; but in any case that does not excuse him. He behaved very badly.
I don't believe for an instant he ever took any notice of Mrs. Porcher. I
believe that is an entire invention. I wonder if the lady who called is
the same lady we saw at the theatre--"

And so on, and so on, all the way home by the Uxbridge Road, and Netting
Hill, and then northward to the august retirement of Lady Samuelson's
large corner house in Ladbroke Square. For a deeply injured person Serena
had really enjoyed herself very much.




CHAPTER XXXI


The burden of August, dense and heavy, lay upon London. Radiating outward
in lifeless and dull-glaring sunshine, it involved the nearer suburbs; so
that Dominic Iglesias, sitting on a bench beside the roadway crossing
Barnes Common, notwithstanding the hour--past six o'clock--and the open
space surrounding him, found the atmosphere hardly less oppressive than
that of the streets. The great world, which plays, had departed. The
little world, outnumbering the great by some five or six millions, which
works, remained. And Dominic Iglesias, since he too worked, remained
likewise, sharing with it the burden of the August heat and languor; and
sharing also, to-day being Sunday, its weekly going forth over the face of
the scorched and sun-seared land seeking rest, and, too often, finding
none.

For the past two months he had seen Poppy St. John but seldom, nor had he
heard from her. Whether by accident or by design he knew not, she had
rarely been at home on those occasions when he had been free to call. For
the last three weeks she had been away up the river, so he understood,
with her friend Dot Parris--_alias_ Miss Charlotte Colthrust. A
blight seemed to Iglesias to have fallen upon his and her friendship, ever
since the day of his return to Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking; and his
discovery, or rather divination, of the relation in which de Courcy Smyth
stood to her. While her husband remained nameless, an unknown quantity,
Dominic deplored the fact of her marriage, but as an abstraction. So soon
as that fact had acquired in his mind--whether rightly or wrongly--a
name and local habitation, now that he was liable to meet it daily
incarnate--and that in most unsavoury shape--liable to be constantly
reminded of its near neighbourhood, to witness a thousand and one
unpleasing peculiarities of speech, habit, and manner, unlooked-for
emotions arose in Iglesias, and those of a character of which he was by no
means proud. Resentment took him, indignation, strange movements of
jealousy and hatred; all very natural, no doubt, but decidedly bad for the
soul. It was idle for him to remind himself that his belief regarding
de Courcy Smyth was based upon supposition, upon circumstantial evidence
which might prove merely coincident. He could not rid himself of that
belief, nor of the emotional consequences of it; and these so vexed him
that he questioned whether it would not be better to remove from Cedar
Lodge and seek a domicile uninfected by the perpetual provocation of
the man's presence. But it was not easy to give a plausible reason to
his hostess for any immediate change of residence; nor was it easy, in
the present stress of business at the bank, to find time or energy for
house-hunting. The atmosphere of Cedar Lodge had become inimical. His
rooms had ceased to be a place of security and repose. Yet whither should
he go? The great wilderness of London seemed vastly inhospitable when it
came to the question of selecting a new dwelling-place.

Meanwhile, he was grievously conscious of the growing estrangement between
himself and Poppy St. John, which he connected, in some way, with this
haunting yet unspoken suspicion of her relation to de Courcy Smyth--a
suspicion which tended to rob intercourse of all spontaneity by
introducing into it a spirit of embarrassment and constraint. He would
have given so very much to know the truth and be able to reckon finally
with it; but he judged it unpermissible that he should approach the ugly
subject first. It was Poppy's affair, her private and unlovely property.
While she elected to keep silence, therefore, it would be disloyal for him
to speak. Still it distressed him, adding to his mental and emotional
unrest. The happiness might have gone out of their intercourse, yet there
were times when he wearied for sight and for speech of her more than he
quite cared to admit. George Lovegrove still held aloof. Dominic rallied
his faith in the divine purpose, rallied his obedience to the divine
ruling, fixed his eyes more patiently upon the promise of the far horizon;
yet it must be owned he felt very friendless and sad at heart.

To-day, driven in part by that friendliness, he had come out on the chance
of gaining some news of Poppy. Disappointment, however, awaited him. For
the discreet Phillimore, though receiving him graciously, reported her
mistress resident at home again, it is true, but gone into town on
business, probably theatrical, and unlikely to return until late.
Therefore Dominic had walked on to Barnes Common, and finding the
uncomfortable bench by the roadside--whereon Cappadocia, the toy spaniel,
had sought his protection more than a year ago--untenanted, had sat down
there to meditate. Cedar Lodge was no longer a refuge. He preferred to
keep away from it as long as might be. Perhaps, too, as the sun dropped
the air would grow cooler, and the southeasterly draught, parched and
scorching as from the mouth of a furnace, which huffled at times only to
fall dead, might shift to some more merciful quarter. A coppery haze hung
over London, above which the rusty white summits of a range of cumulus
cloud towered into the thick grey-blue of the upper sky. Possibly the
cloud harboured thunder and the refreshment of rain amid its giant crags
and precipices. On the chance of such refreshment he would stay.

For in good truth he needed refreshment, and that speedily, being very
tired, fagged by long hours in the City, by heavy responsibilities, by the
burden of the airless August heat, let alone those more intimate causes of
disturbance already indicated. Iglesias could not disguise from himself
that the close application to business was beginning to tell injuriously
upon his health. This same morning, coming back from early Mass, passing
through the flagged passage which leads from Kensington Palace Green into
Church Street, he had become so faint from exhaustion, that reaching--and
not without difficulty--his former home in Holland Street, he had summoned
the neat bald-headed little caretaker and asked permission to enter the
house and rest. The ground-floor rooms were cool and dusky, sheltered by
closed shutters from the summer sun. Only the French-window of the back
dining-room stood open, on to the flight of wrought-iron steps leading
down into the garden. Beside it the caretaker, not without husky
coughings, placed a kitchen chair for Iglesias and fetched him a glass of
water.

"I could wish I had something better to offer you, sir," he said, "but I
am an abstainer by habit myself; and I have no liquor of any kind,
unfortunately, in the house."

The water, however, was pleasantly cold, and Dominic drank it thankfully.
He could have fancied there was virtue in it--the virtue of things
blessed by long-ago mother-love. And, thinking of that, his eyes filled
with tears as he looked out over the small neglected garden. Of the once
glorious laburnum there remained only an unsightly stump, but jasmine
still clothed the enclosing walls, the dark green of its straggling shoots
starred here and there with belated white blossoms. About the lip of the
empty stone basin, vigorously chirruping, sparrows came and went, while in
the far corner a grove of starveling sunflowers lifted their brown and
yellow-rayed faces towards the light. Dominic, resting gratefully in the
cool semi-darkness of the empty room, until the faintness which had
attacked him was passed, found the place very gentle, soothing, and sweet.
The sadder memories had died out here, so he noted. Only gracious and
tender ones remained. He wished he could stay on indefinitely. As the
years multiply, and the chequered story of them lengthens, it is
comforting to dwell in a place where, once on a time, one had been greatly
loved.

Dominic turned to the waiting caretaker, who regarded him with mingled
solicitude, admiration, and deference.

"So the house is still unlet?" he said.

"Yes, sir, and is likely to remain so, I apprehend. The lease, as I
understand, falls in a very few years hence, and the landlord is unwilling
to make any outlay on the house, which will probably then be pulled down;
while no tenant, I opine, would be willing to rent a residence so wanting
in modern decoration and modern conveniences. Weeks pass, sir, without any
persons calling to view."

"Yet the rent is low?" Iglesias said.

"Very low for so genteel a district--I am a native of Kensington, 'the
royal village,' myself, sir--and no premium is asked."

Now, sitting on the uneasy bench upon the confines of Barnes Common--while
the little many-millioned world, which works, in gangs, and groups, and
amatory couples, and somewhat foot-weary family parties, sauntered
by--that same oppression of faintness came over Dominic Iglesias, along
with a great nostalgia for the cool, dusky, low-ceilinged rooms, and the
neglected yet still bravely blossoming garden of the little house in
Holland Street.

"It would be pleasant to spend one's last days and draw one's last breath
there," Iglesias said to himself; "when the sum of endeavour is complete,
when the last cable has been sent, the last column of figures balanced and
audited, when the ledgers are closed and one's work being fairly finished
one is free to sit still and listen--not fearfully, but with reverent
curiosity--for the footsteps of Death and the secrets he has in his
keeping."

And there he paused, for the scorched dusty land and pale dense sky, even
the rusty white summits of the great range of cloud, slowly, slowly
climbing high heaven--even the light dresses of passing women and
children--went suddenly black, indistinct, and confused to his sight, so
that he seemed to be falling through some depth of dark and untenanted
space, while the dust, thick, stifling, clinging, fell with him,
encircling, enveloping him with a horror of suffocation, of crushing,
impalpable, yet unescapable, dead weight.

Then out of the darkness, out of the dust, in voluminous dusty drab motor
veil and dusty drab motor coat, the Lady of the Windswept Dust herself
came towards him, bringing consolation and help.




CHAPTER XXXII


"You are coming round, dear man. You really look better. What you wanted
was a sensible Christian meal. For, I tell you, you were most uncommonly
done, and it was a near shave whether I should get you home here without
having to call on the populace for assistance. Don't go and worry now. You
were superb as usual, with enough personal dignity to supply a whole
dynasty, and have some left over for washing-day into the bargain. You
should give lessons in the art of majestic collapse--not that you did
collapse, thank goodness! But you came precious near it.--Yes, I mean it,
I mean it, dear man"--Poppy nodded her head at him, leaned across the
corner of the table and patted his arm with the utmost friendliness. "I
want to terrify you into being more careful. There are plenty of people
one could jolly well spare; but you're not among them. So lay that to
heart, or I shan't have an easy moment. And then as to personal dignity,
if you will excuse my entering into details of costume, in that grey
top-hat, grey frock-coat, et cetera, et cetera, you looked more fit for
the Ascot Royal Enclosure than for Barnes Common on a broiling August
Sunday. The populace eyed you with awe.--Don't be offended, there's a
dear. You can't help being very smart and very beautiful; and you oughtn't
to want to help it even if you could, since it gives me so much pleasure.
Your tailor's a gem. But how he must love you, must be ready to dress you
free of cost for the simple joy of fitting on."

The little dinner had been excellent. The clear soup hot, and the
ninety-two Ayala, extra dry, chilled to a nicety--and so with the rest of
the menu. Glass, silver, china, were set forth daintily upon the fine
white damask, under the glow of scarlet-shaded candles. The double doors
connecting the small drawing-room and dining-room stood open; this,
combined with the fact that lights were limited to the dinner-table,
giving an agreeable effect of coolness and of space. While, as arrayed in
a crisp black muslin gown--the frills and panels of it painted with shaded
crimson roses and bronze-green leaves--Poppy St. John ministered to her
guest, chattered to, and rallied him, her eyes were extraordinarily dark
and luminous, and her voice rich in soft caressing tones. Never had she
appeared more engaging, more natural and human, never stronger yet more
tenderly gay. Dominic Iglesias yielded himself up gladly, gratefully, to
the charm of the woman and to the comfort of his surroundings. Temperate
in all things, he was temperate in enjoyment. Yet he was touched, he was
happy. Life was very sweet to him in this hour of relief from physical
distress, of renewed friendship, and of pretty material circumstance.

"It was such a mercy I had a decent meal to offer you," Poppy went on.
"Often the commissariat department is a bit sketchy on Sunday, in--well,
in these days of the cleaned slate. But you see, Lionel Gordon, of the
Twentieth Century Theatre, was to tell me, this afternoon, what decision
he had come to about the engagement I have been spelling to get. He is an
appalling mongrel, three-parts German Jew and one part Scotchman--sweet
mixture of the Chosen and Self-Chosen people! He never was pretty, and
increasing years have not rendered his appearance more enticing; but he's
the cleverest manager going, on either side of the Atlantic, and he
doesn't go back on his word once given, as too many of them do. Well, he
was to let me know; and to tell the truth, beloved lunatic, I was rather
keen about this engagement. I knew if he did not give it me I should be a
little hipped, and should stand in need of support and consolation; while,
if he did, I should be rather expansive, and should want suitably to
celebrate the event. So I ordered a good dinner to be ready in either
case"--Poppy laughed gently. "Queer thing the artist," she said, "with its
instinct of falling back on creature comforts. Whatever happens, good luck
or bad luck, it always eats."

"And they gave you the engagement?" Iglesias inquired.

Poppy nodded her head in assent.

"Yes, dear man, Lionel gave it me. He'd have been a fool if he hadn't, for
he knows who I am and what training I've had. And then Fallowfeild has
made things easy. He's a thundering good friend, Fallowfeild is; and in
view of late events--once I had told him to go, I wouldn't, of course,
take a penny of Alaric's--I had no conscience about letting Fallowfeild be
useful. He was lovely about it. I shall only draw a nominal salary for the
first six months until I have proved myself. What I want is my
opportunity; and money matters being made easy helped materially. Both the
Chosen and Self-Chosen People have a wonderfully keen eye to the boodle,
bless their little hearts and consciences!"

She paused, leaning her elbows on the table and looking sideways at
Iglesias, her head thrown back.

"I am dreadfully glad to have you here to-night," she went on, "because
you see it's a turning-point. I have pretty well climbed the ridge and
reached the watershed. The streams have all started running in the other
direction--towards the dear old work and worry, the envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness, and all the fun, too, and good comradeship, and
ambition, and joy, of the theatre. Can you understand, I at once adore and
detest it, for it's a terribly mixed business. Already I keep on seeing
the rows of pinky-white faces rising, tier above tier, up to the roof,
which turn you sick and give you cold shivers all down your spine when you
first come on. And then I go hot with the fight against their apathy or
opposition, the glorious fight to conquer and hold an audience, and bend
its emotions and its sympathies, as the wind bends the meadow grass, to
one's will."

Poppy stretched out her hand across the corner of the table again, laying
it upon Iglesias' hand. Her eyes danced with excitement, yet her voice
shook and the words came brokenly.

"But, dearly beloved, I have your blessing on this new departure, haven't
I?" she asked. "After all, it's you, just simply you, that sends me back
to an honest life and to my profession. So I should like to have your
blessing--that, and your prayers."

"Can you doubt that you have them," Iglesias answered, and his voice, too,
shook, somewhat, "now and always, dearest of friends?"

For a little minute Poppy sat looking full at him, he looking full at her.
Then, with a sort of rush, she rose to her feet.

"Come along, this won't do," she said. "Sentiment strictly prohibited.
It's not wholesome for you after the nasty turn you had on Barnes
Common--and it's not particularly wholesome for me either, though for
quite other reasons. Moreover, it's fiendishly hot in here. So see, dear
man, you're not going just yet. I telephoned to the Bell Inn stables for a
private hansom to be on hand about ten thirty for you. Meanwhile, you're
to take it easy and rest. It is but five steps upstairs, and that won't
tire you. Come up into the cool and have your coffee on the balcony."

And so it came about that Dominic Iglesias followed Poppy St. John
upstairs--she moving rapidly, in a way defiantly--followed her into a
bedchamber, where a subtle sweetness of orris-root met him; and a
fantastic brightness of gaslight and moonlight, coming in through open
windows, chequered the handsome dark-polished brass-inlaid furniture, the
green silk coverlet and hangings, the dimly patterned ceiling and walls.
Without hesitation or apology, Poppy walked straight through this
apartment, and passed out on to the white-planked and white-railed
balcony.

The dome of the sky was immense and had become perfectly clear, the great
clouds having boiled up during the afternoon only to sink away and vanish
at sunset, as is their wont in seasons of drought. North and east the
glare of London pulsed along the horizon; and above it the stars were
faint, since the radiant first-quarter moon rode high, drenching roadway
and palings, the stretch of the polo-ground, the shrubberies and grove of
giant elms, with white light blotted and barred, here and there, by black
shadow. The air was still, but less oppressive, the cruelty of sun-heat
having gone out of it and only a suavity remaining. The _facade_ of
the terrace of smirking, self-conscious, much-be-flowered and be-balconied
little houses had taken on a certain worth of picturesqueness, suggestive
of the bazaar of some far-away Oriental city rather than of a vulgar
London suburb, the summer night even here producing an exquisiteness of
effect and making itself very sensibly felt. Poppy silently motioned her
guest to the further of the two cane deck-chairs set in the recess,
arranged a cushion at his back, drew up a little mother-of-pearl inlaid
table beside him, poured coffee into two cups. Then she moved across to
the rail of the balcony, and stood there, her head thrown back, her hands
clasped behind her, facing the moonlight, which covered her slender
rounded figure from head to foot as with a pale transparent veil of
infinite tenuity. Iglesias could see the rise and fall of her bosom, the
flutter of her eyelids, the involuntary movement of her lips as she
pressed them together, restraining, as might be divined, words to which
she judged it wiser to deny utterance.

And this hardly repressed excitement in Poppy's bearing and aspect, along
with the peculiar scene and circumstances in which he found himself,
worked profoundly upon Dominic Iglesias. In passing through that scented,
half-discovered, fantastically lighted bedchamber and stepping out into
the magic of the night, he had stepped out, in imagination, into regions
dreamed of in earlier years--when reading poetry or hearing music,--but
never fairly entered, still less enjoyed, since all the duties and
obligations of his daily life militated against and even forbade
such enjoyment. The weariness of his work in the City, the petty
annoyances he suffered at Cedar Lodge, the haunting disgust of de Courcy
Smyth's presence, fell away from him, becoming for the time as though they
were not. He never had been, nor was he now, in any degree self-indulgent
or a sentimentalist. The appeal of the present somewhat enchanted hour was
to the intellect and the spirit, rather than sensuous, still less sensual.
Nevertheless, an almost passionate desire of earthly beauty took him--of
the beauty of things seen, of things plastic, beauty of the human form;
beauty of far-distant lands and the varied pageant of their aspect and
history; of great rivers flowing seaward; of tombs by the wayside; of the
glorious terror of the desert's naked face; of languorous fountain-cooled
gardens, close hid in the burning heart of ancient cities; beauty of
sound, beauty of words and phrases, above all, of the eternal beauty of
youth and the illimitable expectation and hope of it.

And it was out of all this, out of the mirage of these vast elusive
prospects and apprehensions, that he answered Poppy St. John, as with
serious eyes yet smiling lips she turned, and coming across the white
floor sat down beside him, saying:

"How goes it, Dominic? Are you rested?"

"Yes," he answered, "I am rested. And more than that, I am alive and
awake, strangely awake and full of vision--thanks to you."

Poppy's expression sweetened, becoming protective, maternal. She leaned
back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap; yet there was still a
certain tension in her expression, an intensity as of inward excitement in
her gaze.

"Tell me things, then," she said, "tell me things about yourself, if the
gift of seeing is upon you.--There's no one to overhear. The neighbours on
both sides are away for the holidays, thank the powers! and their houses
stand empty. While the voices and footsteps down in the road only make us
more happily alone. So tell me things, Dominic. I am a trifle stirred up
with all this affair of the theatre, and you always quiet me. I'm really a
very good child. I deserve a treat. And there are things I dreadfully want
to know."

"Alas! there is so absurdly little to tell," Iglesias answered, "that,
here and now, in face of my existing sense of life and of vision, I am
humbled by my own ignorance and poverty of achievement. That poverty, I
suppose, is all the more apparent to me, because twice to-day I have
been--so I judge, at least--within measurable distance of bidding farewell
to this astonishingly wonderful world and the fashion of it. It comes home
to me how little I have seen, how little I have profited, how little I
know. I would have liked to leave it; it would be more seemly to do so,
having profited more largely by my sojourn here."

Iglesias paused, excitement which his natural sobriety disapproved gaining
him, too, through that ache of unrealised beauty. For a moment he
struggled with it as with a rising tide, then resigned himself.

"And yet," he added, "in other respects I should not be sorry to hear the
hour strike, for curiosity of the unknown is very strong in me.
Opportunity may have been narrow, and one may have been balked of high
endeavour and rich experience, by lack of talent and by adverse
circumstances; but in the supreme, the crowning experience, that of death
and all which, for joy or sorrow, lies beyond it, even the most obscure,
the most uncultured and untravelled must participate."

"Don't be in too great a deuce of a hurry to satisfy that curiosity, dear
man," Poppy put in. "You must contrive to exercise patience for a little
while yet, please; always remembering that it is entirely superfluous to
run to catch a train which is bound not to start until you are on board of
it. And then, too, you see--well, there's me, after all, and I want you."

Iglesias' face grew keen, as he looked at her through that encompassing
whiteness of moonlight.

"I am glad of that," he said very quietly, "because you are to me, dear
friend, what no other human being has ever yet been. The saddest thing
that could happen to me, save loss of faith, would be that you should
cease to want me. I only pray God, if it is not self-seeking, that you
may continue to want me as long as I live."

"But your religion?" she asked, a point of jealousy pricking her.

"My religion forbids sin, whether of body or mind; forbids violation of
the eternal spiritual proportion, by any placing of the creature before
the Creator in a man's action or in his heart. But my religion enjoins
love and stimulates it; since only through loving can we fulfil the
highest possibility of our nature, which is to grow into the likeness of
Almighty God."

"You believe that?" Poppy asked again.

"I do more," Iglesias said. "I know it."

Then both fell silent, having reached the place where words hinder rather
than help thought. And, as it happened, just then the stillness was
sensibly broken up, and the magic of the night encroached upon by the
passing of a couple of _char-a-bancs_ in the road below, loaded up
with trippers faring homewards from a day's outing at Hampton Court. The
tired teams jog-trotted haltingly. The wheels whispered hoarsely in the
muffling dust; and voices mingled somewhat plaintively in the singing of
a then popular khaki sing--"The Soldiers of the Queen." Hearing all of
which, as the refrain died away Londonwards up the great suburban
road, the compelling drama and pathos of life as the multitude lives
it--stupidly, without ideas, without any conscious nobility of purpose,
yet with a certain blundering and clumsy heroism--took Poppy St. John by
the throat. Those who stand aside from that democratic everyday drama,
rejecting alike the common joys and common sorrows of it, have need--so it
seemed to her--to account for and justify themselves lest they become
suspect. Therefore she looked at Dominic Iglesias intently, questioningly,
hesitated a moment, and then spoke.

"Still I don't understand you, in your determined detachment of attitude.
Tell me, if you are not afraid of love, why have you never married?" she
said.

And he, divining to an extent that which inspired her question, smiled at
her somewhat proudly as he answered.

"Be under no misapprehension, dear friend. I am a perfectly normal piece
of flesh and blood, with a man's normal passions, and his natural craving
for wife, and child, home, family, and the like. But during my mother's
lifetime I was bound to other service than that of marriage."

"But in these years since her death?" Poppy asked.

"There is a time for everything, as the Preacher testifies, a due and
proper time which must be observed if life is to be a reasoned progress,
not a mere haphazard stumbling from the weakness of childhood to the
incapacity of old age. And, can anything be more objectionably at variance
with that wise teaching than the spectacle of amorous uxorious
efflorescence in a man of well over fifty?"

Poppy permitted herself a lively grimace.

"All the same you have sacrificed yourself, as usual," she said.

"Not so very greatly, perhaps," Iglesias replied, with a soberly humorous
expression. "For I have always been very exacting and have asked very
much. I am culpably fastidious. My tastes are far beyond my means, my
desires out of all reasonable relation to my station and my merits. And it
should be remembered that my circle of acquaintances has been a very
limited one, until quite recently--I do not wish to appear more glaringly
arrogant or discourteous than I actually am. I had my ideal. It happened
that I failed to realise it; and I am very impatient of compromise in
matters of intimate and purely personal import. In respect of them I hold
I have an unqualified right to consult my own tastes. It has always been
easier to me to go without than to accept a second-best."

"In point of fact no woman was good enough! Poor brutes!"

Poppy mused a little, with averted face.

"How beastly cheap they'd all feel--I've not forgotten the undulating and
aspiring withered leaf--if they knew how mightily they all fell short!"
she added naughtily. Suddenly she looked round at Dominic Iglesias. Her
eyes were as stars, but her lips trembled. "Bless me, but you've
extensively original methods of conveying information! It's lucky for me
I've a steady head. So--so it comes to this--I reign all alone?" she said.

"Yes, dear friend, save for my love for my mother--such as the throne is
or ever has been--you reign alone," Iglesias answered quietly.

Poppy rested her elbows upon her knees, dropped her face into her hands,
and sat thus bowed together in the whiteness of the moonlight.

"Ah, dear!" she murmured presently, brokenly, "I've got my answer. It's
better and--worse, than I expected. All the same I'm content--that's to
say, the best of me is--royally, consummately content.--Thank you a
thousand times, thrice-beloved and very most exceedingly unworldy-wise
one," she said.

Then for a while both were silent, wrapped about by, and resting in, the
magic of the summer night. When Poppy roused herself at last to speak, it
was in a different key, studiously matter-of-fact.

"Look here, dear man, do you in the least realise how extremely far gone
you were when I arrived to you on Barnes Common this evening? Because I
tell you plainly I didn't in the very least like it. In my opinion it is
high time you gave up dragging that Barking Brothers & Barking cart."

"I shall give up doing so very soon," Iglesias replied. "Just now I am
acting as manager. Sir Abel is at Marienbad, and the other partners are
out of town."

"I like that--lazy animals!" Poppy said.

"But the situation is in process of righting itself--has practically
righted itself already."

"Thanks to you."

"In part, no doubt. There was a disposition to panic, which rendered it
exceedingly difficult to get accurate and definite information at first.
However, I arrived at the necessary data with patience and diplomacy, and
was able to draw out a clear detailed statement. This proved so far
satisfactory that Messrs. Gommee, Hills, Murray & Co. and Pavitt's Bank
have considered themselves justified in undertaking to finance Barking
Brothers until business in South Africa has resumed its ordinary course."

"Then the elderly plungers are saved?"

"Yes, I believe, practically they are saved," Iglesias said. "And,
therefore, as soon as Sir Abel has finished his cure and returns I shall
retire."

Poppy rose, clapping her hands together with irritation.

"Sir Abel's cure be hanged!" she cried. "What do I care about his idiotic
old liver or his gout, or anything else. Let him pay the price of steadily
over-eating himself for more than half a century. I've no use for him.
What I have a use for is you, dear man; more than ever now, don't you
see," her voice softened, became caressing, "after our recent little
explanation. And you shan't kill yourself. I won't have it. I won't allow
it. Therefore be reasonable, my good dear. Put away your mania of
self-immolation--or keep it exclusively for my benefit. Write and tell the
Barking man to hurry up with his liver and his gout. Tell him you're being
sweated to death dragging his rotten old banking cart, and that he's just
got to come home and set you free, and get between the shafts and do the
dragging and sweating himself.--Ah, there's the hansom. You must go. I'd
no notion it was so late."

And so it came about that, once more, Dominic Iglesias followed the
Lady of the Windswept Dust into the faintly scented bedchamber, where
fantastic brightness of gaslight and moonlight chequered the polished
surfaces of the dark furniture, the green silk coverlet and hangings,
the dimly-patterned ceiling and walls. His instinct was to pass on, as
quickly as might be, to the secure commonplace of the landing without. But
half-way across the room, at the foot of the low-pillared and brass-inlaid
bedstead, Poppy St. John stopped, and turned swiftly, barring his passage
with extended arms.

"Stay a minute, for probably we shall never meet in this poor little house
again, best beloved one," she said. "It is too far out. I must move into
town. Lionel puts the play into rehearsal next week, and I must live near
the theatre. And then, too--well, you know, since I've made up my mind,
it's best to clean the slate even in respect of one's dwelling-place.
Memories stick, stick like a leech; and they raise emotions of a slightly
disturbing character sometimes. I am sure of myself; and yet I know it's
safest to make a clean sweep of whatever reminds me of all the forbidden
dear damned lot. I regret nothing--don't imagine that. I'm keen on my
work. The artist, after all, is the strongest thing in me. I'm quite
happy, now I have made up my mind. My nose is in the air. I can look
creation in the face without winking an eyelid. I can respect myself. And
I'm tremendously grateful to Lionel Gordon for taking me on spec, and to
Fallowfeild for greasing the creature's Caledonian-Teutonic-Hebraic palm
for me. Still--still--you can imagine, can't you, that, take it all round,
it's not precisely a Young Woman's Christian Association blooming picnic
party for me just at present?"

Poppy dashed her hand across her eyes, half laughing, half sobbing.

"Ah, love me, Dominic, love me, in your own way, the clean way--that's all
I ask, all that I want--only love me always," she said.

She laid her hands on Iglesias' shoulders and threw back her head. And he,
holding her, bending down kissed her white face, soft heavy hair, over-red
lips, her tragic and unfathomable eyes--which looking on the evil and
measuring the very actual immediate delights of it, still had courage, in
the end, to reject it and choose the good--kissed them reverently,
gravely, proudly, with the chastity and chivalry of perfect friendship.

"Ah! that's better. I'm better. Bless you; don't be afraid. I'll play fair
to the finish--only keep well. Quit that rotten old bank.--Now go, dear
man, go," Poppy said.




CHAPTER XXXIII


During the past six weeks events had galloped. To Iglesias it appeared
that changes were in course of arriving in battalions. He neither hailed
nor deplored them, but met them with a stoical patience. To realise them
clearly, in all their bearings, would have been to add to the sense of
fatigue from which he too constantly suffered. More than sufficient to
each day was the labour thereof. So he looked beyond, to the greater
repose and freedom which, as he trusted, lay ahead.

Upon the morning immediately in question he had closed his work at the
bank. Sir Abel's demeanour had been characteristic. His clothes, it is
true, still hung loosely upon him. His library chair and extensive
writing-table appeared a world too big. For he was shrunken and had
become an old man. Yet, though signs of chastening thus outwardly declared
themselves, in spirit he had regained tone and returned to his former high
estate. Along with the revival of financial security had come a revival of
pomposity, an addiction to patronage in manner and platitudes in speech.
He had ceased to be humble and human, self-righteous self-complacency
again loudly announcing itself.

"So you propose to retire, you ask to be relieved of your duties, my good
friend?" he asked of Iglesias, who had requested the favour of an
interview in his private room. "Let us, then, congratulate ourselves upon
the fact that I have returned from my sojourn upon the continent with so
far renovated health that I feel equal to meeting the arduous
responsibilities of my position unaided; and am not, consequently,
compelled, out of a sense of duty either to myself or to my colleagues, to
offer any objection to your retirement. Before we part I should, however,
wish to place it clearly on record that my confidence, both in the
soundness of my own judgment and in our capacity, as capitalists, to meet
any strain put upon our resources, was not misplaced. This no one can, I
think, fail to admit. Our house emerges from this period of trial with the
hall-mark of public sympathy and esteem upon it. And, in this connection,
it is instructive to note the working of the law of compensation. This
war, for example, which to the ordinary mind might have appeared an
unmixed evil, since it threatened to jeopardise our position among the
leading financiers of the capital of the civilised world, has, in the
event, served, not only to consolidate our position, but to unmask the
practices of that unscrupulous and self-seeking member of our firm, my
unhappy nephew Reginald, and afford us legitimate excuse for his removal.
We appeared to touch on disaster; but, by that very means, we have been
enabled to rid ourselves of a canker. Still this must remain a painful
subject."

Sir Abel became pensive, fixing his gaze, the while, upon the portrait
adorning the wall over against him. To an acute observer the said portrait
had always been subtly ironical. Now it had become coarsely so--a
merciless caricature of the shrivelled old gentleman whom it represented,
and to whom it bore much the same resemblance as a balloon soaring
skywards, fully inflated, bears to that same object with half the gas let
out of it in a condition of flabby and wobbling semi-collapse.

"A painful subject," he repeated nobly--"I refrain from enlarging upon it,
and pass to other matters. As to the part you yourself have borne in the
history of our recent anxieties, Iglesias, I feel I cannot do less than
tender you the thanks of myself and my co-partners. I do not disguise from
you that a tendency existed to criticise my action in summoning you, to
dub your business methods antiquated, and question your ability to march
with the times. But these objections proved, I am happy to think,
unfounded. The faith I reposed in you has been justified. And I may tell
you, in confidence, that, should the occasion for doing so arise, my
colleagues will in future have as little hesitation in calling upon your
services as I should have myself."

The speaker paused, as for applause. And Dominic, who had remained
standing during this prolonged oration--no suggestion having been made on
the present occasion that he should be seated--proceeded to acknowledge
the peculiar compliment just paid him, with somewhat sardonic courtesy.

"Your words are extremely reassuring, Sir Abel," he remarked calmly.

The gentleman addressed regarded him sharply for a moment, as though
doubtful of the exact purport of his words. Then, suspicion of covert
sarcasm being clearly inadmissible, Sir Abel spoke again in his largest
platform manner, although the tones of his voice, like his person, were
shrunken, docked of the fulness of their former rotundity and unction.

"It has ever been my effort to reward merit by encouragement," he replied.
"And, were testimony to the wisdom of my practice, in this particular,
needed, I should point, I candidly tell you, my good friend, to the
excellent results of my recent demand upon your cooperation and support."
He leaned sideways in his chair, assuming the posture of the portrait,
conscious of having really said a very handsome thing indeed to his
ex-head-clerk. "For," he added, "I sincerely believe in the worth of
example. It is hardly too much to assert that a generous and high-minded
employer eventually stamps the employed with a reflection, at least, of
his own superior qualities."

Again he paused. But truth to tell, Dominic Iglesias had not only grown
very weary of discourse and discourser, but somewhat impatient also. He had
hoped better things of the man after the nasty shaking fortune had
recently given him. Consequently he was disappointed; for it was very
effectually borne in upon him that only absence of feathers makes for
grace in a goose. Once the nudity of the foolish bird covered, it hisses,
and that loudly, to the old tune. Hence, in the interests of Christian
charity, he agreed with himself to cut short the interview, lest anger
should get the better of toleration.

"I think we have now discussed all questions calling for your personal
attention, Sir Abel," he said, "and all documents and correspondence
relating to affairs during your absence have been placed in your hands. If
therefore you have nothing further to ask me, I need not encroach any
longer upon your valuable time."

With that, after a brief pause, he moved towards the door; but the other
man, half rising from his chair, called after him.

"Iglesias, your attention for one moment--that matter of a salary?"

"I supposed I had made my terms perfectly clear, Sir Abel," Dominic
remarked coldly.

"No doubt, in the first instance. But should you have reconsidered your
decision, and should you think the pension you enjoy an insufficient
remuneration, I am empowered to make you the offer, in addition, of a
fixed salary for the past six months."

Listening to which tardy and awkward recognition of his own rather
princely dealings, Mr. Iglesias' temper began to rise, his jaw to grow
rigid, and his eyes dangerously alight.

"I am not in the habit of changing my mind, Sir Abel," he said. "I
proposed to make you a free gift of my time and such experience as I
may possess. Nothing has occurred to alter or modify that intention.
There are circumstances, into which I do not choose to enter, which would
render it extremely distasteful to me to accept anything--over and above
my pension--from yourself or from any member of your family or firm."

Here Sir Abel, who had been standing, sagged down,
half-empty-balloon-like, into his chair. Again he eyed Iglesias sharply,
doubtful of the exact purport of his speech. But again suspicion of covert
sarcasm, still more of covert rebuke, being to him quite inconceivable, he
rejoined with a condescension which he could not but feel was altogether
praiseworthy:

"Enough, enough, my good friend. That is sufficient. I will detain you no
longer; but will merely add that I commend your reticence while
appreciating the sentiments which dictate your refusal. These it is easy
to interpret. They shall not be forgotten, since they constitute a very
suitable acknowledgment of the advantages and benefits which have accrued
to you during you long association with my partners and myself."

Later, journeying westward upon the 'bustop, Dominic Iglesias meditated in
a spirit of humorous pity upon the above conversation. He was very glad he
had not lost his temper. Eyes blinded by self-worship, an inpenetrable
hide, these things, too, have their uses in time--very practical uses,
which it would be silly to ignore. Why, then, be angry? The truly wise
man, as Dominic told himself with a somewhat mournful smile, learns to
leave such time-wise fools as Sir Abel Barking to Almighty God for
chastisement, because--if it can be said without irreverence--the
Almighty alone has wit enough to deal with them. And, for his comfort on
lower levels, he reminded himself that though the house of Barking might
show him scant gratitude, and attribute its financial resurrection to its
own inherent virtue, this was not the opinion held by outsiders. The
manager of Pavitt's Bank, and certain members of Goome, Hills, Murray &
Co., had congratulated Iglesias, personally, upon his admirable conduct
of affairs during the crisis, and assured him of the high respect they had
conceived for his judgment, his probity, and business acumen. In this
there was satisfaction of a silent but deep-seated sort--satisfaction of
pride, since he had accomplished that which he had set forth to
accomplish: satisfaction of honour through unbiassed and unsolicited
commendation. With that satisfaction he bade himself rest thankfully
content, while turning his thoughts to other and more edifying subjects.

And, in this connection, it was inevitable that a former journeying
westward upon a 'bustop should occur to him, with its strange record of
likeness and unlikeness in circumstance and outlook. Then, as now,
somewhat outworn in mind and in health, he had closed a period of
labour and faced new conditions, new habits, unaccustomed freedom and
leisure. But now on matters of vital, because of eternal, importance, his
mind was at rest. Loneliness and on-coming old age had ceased to disquiet
him. The ship of his individual fate no longer drifted rudderless or
risked danger of stranding, but steered steadily, fearlessly, towards the
promise of a secure and lovely harbourage. The voyage might be long or
short. At this moment Dominic supposed himself indifferent in the matter,
since he believed--not presumptuously, but through the outreaching of a
great faith--that the end was certain. And meditating, just now, upon that
gracious conviction, while the red-painted half-empty omnibus fared onward
down Piccadilly, a sense of the unusual graciousness of things immediate
and visible took hold on him.

For to-day the monstrous mother, London-town, wore a pensive and delicate
aspect. The tender melancholy of early autumn was upon her, she looking
etherealised and even youthful, as does a penitent cleansed from the soil
of past transgressions by fasting and tears. No doubt she would sin again
and befoul herself, for the melting moods of a great city are transient;
yet for the moment she showed very meek and mild. The atmosphere was
clear, with the exquisite clarity which follows abundant and welcome rain
after a spell of heat and drought. The trees, somewhat sparse in foliage,
were distinct with infinite gradations of blonde, golden, and umber tints,
as of burnished metal, against their black branches and stems. The endless
vista of grey and red buildings, outlined finely yet without harshness,
towered up into a thin, sad, blue sky overspread with long-drawn shoals
and islands, low-shored and sinuous, of pale luminous cloud. Upon the
grey pavements the bright-coloured dress of a woman--mauve, green, or
pink--took on a peculiar value here and there, amid the generality of
darkly clad pedestrians. And in the traffic, too, the white tilt of a van
or rather barbaric reds and yellows of the omnibuses, stood away from the
sombre hues of the mass of vehicles. The air, as Iglesias met it--he
occupying the seat on the right immediately behind that of the driver--was
soft, yet with a perceptible freshness of moisture in it; a cool, wistful
wind seeming to hail from very far, the wings of it laden less with
hopeful promise than with rare unspoken farewells, gentle yet penetrating
regrets; so that Dominic, even while welcoming the refreshment of it, was
moved in spirit with impressions of impending finality as though it spoke
to him of things finished, laid aside, not wholly without sorrow
relinquished and--so far as outward seeming went--forgot.

Involuntarily his eyes filled with tears. Then he reproached himself. Of
what had he to complain? The will must indeed be weak, the spiritual
vision reprehensively clouded, if these vague voices of nature could so
disturb the serenity of the soul. Thus he reasoned with himself, almost
sternly. But, just then, the flaming rose-scarlet bill on the knife-board
of a passing omnibus attracted his attention, along with the announcement,
in big letters, which it set forth. To-night the Twentieth Century Theatre
opened its winter season with a new piece by that admirable but all too
indolent and intermittent dramatist, Antony Hammond; and in it Poppy St.
John played the leading lady's part.




CHAPTER XXXIV


Opposite St. Mary Abbott's church Mr. Iglesias lighted down from the
'bustop. His eyes were still dazzled by those flaming bills.--Lionel
Gordon was advertising handsomely. The knife-board of every second omnibus
displayed them, now he came to look.--His thought turned in quickened
interest towards the Lady of the Windswept Dust and all that the said
advertisements stood for in her case. He had seen her a few days ago,
after rehearsal, and she had warned him off being present tonight.

"It's all going like hot cakes, dear man," she had said gaily, "still, as
you love me, don't come. I should be more nervous of you than ninety dozen
critics. I shall want you badly, all the same, don't doubt that; and I
shall play to you, all the while, though you're not there. But--don't you
understand?--if I actually saw you it might come between me and my part. I
shouldn't be sure who I really was, and that would make me as jumpy as a
sick cat. You shall know--I'll wire to you directly the show's over; but
I'd best have my first round quite alone with the public. And then a first
night is always a bit jungly--not quite fair on the play or the company,
or the audience either for that matter. A play's the same as a ship, if
there's any real art in it. It needs time to find itself. So just wait,
like a lamb, till we've all shaken into place, and I'm quite at home in
the saddle."

And in truth Dominic Iglesias had plenty to occupy his time and attention
at this particular juncture, irrespective of Poppy's _debut_ at the
Twentieth Century Theatre. For tomorrow would close his connection with
Cedar Lodge, as to-day had closed his connection with Messrs. Barking
Brothers & Barking. The mind in hours of fatigue, when vitality is low and
the power of concentration consequently deficient, has a tendency to work
in layers, so to speak, one strain of thought overlying another. Hence it
was that Iglesias' contemplation of those gaudy advertisements, and of
their bearing upon Poppy's fortunes, failed to oust the premonitions of
finality which had come to and somewhat perturbed him as he looked upon
the pensive tearwashed face of London-penitent, cleansed by the breath of
the wistful far-hailing autumn wind. Involuntarily, and notwithstanding
his repudiation of them, he continued to question those premonitions and
the clinging melancholy of them, asking whether they bore relation
merely to the two not wholly unwelcome partings above indicated; or
whether the foreboding induced by them did not find its source in some
sentiment, some intuition of approaching change, far more intimate and
profound than cessation of employment or alteration of dwelling-place.
Then, as he walked on up Church Street another layer of thought presented
itself. For he could not but call to mind how many hundred times he had
trodden that pavement before close against the close-packed traffic, the
high barrack-wall on the right hand, the row of modest shop-fronts on
the left, on his way home to the little house in Holland Street. Once more
that house was home to him. He would cross its familiar threshold to-day
as master. Yet how differently to of old! How steep the hill was! How
languid and spent he became in ascending it--slowly, deliberately, instead
of with light-footed energy and indifference! And this made him ask
himself, what if these premonitions of finality, of impending farewells,
of compulsory relinquishment, had indeed a very special and definite
significance, being sent to him as heralds of the approach of a common
yet--to each individual being--unique and altogether tremendous change?
What if that haunting curiosity of the unknown--concerning which he had
spoken with Poppy St. John amid the white magic of the moonlight during
the enchanted hour of his and her friendship--was to be satisfied very
soon?

Iglesias drew himself up to his full height, fatigue and bodily weakness
alike forgotten, and stood for a little space at the turn into Holland
Street, hat in hand, facing the delicately chill wind and looking away
into the fine perspective of sky overspread by shoals and islands of pale
luminous cloud. Calmly--yet with the sharp amazement inevitable when
things taken for granted, tacitly and nominally accepted throughout a
lifetime, suddenly advance into the immediate foreground, becoming actual,
tangible, imperative--he asked himself, was death so very near, then? At
the church of the Carmelite Priory just above--the high slated roofs and
slender iron crockets of which overtopped the parapets of the intervening
houses--a bell tolled as the officiating priest, in giving the
Benediction, elevated the sacred Host. And that note, at once austere and
plaintive, striking across the hoarse murmur and trample of the streets,
was very grateful to Dominic Iglesias. For it assured him of this, at
least, that when for him the supreme hour did indeed strike and he was
called upon to go forth alone--as every soul must go--to meet the
impenetrable mystery which veils the close of the earthly chapter, he
would not go forth unbefriended, but absolved, anointed, fortified, made
ready--in so far as readiness for so stupendous an ordeal is possible--by
the rites of Holy Church.

"_Fiat misericordia tua Domine super nos: quemad-modum speravimus te. In
te Domine speravi: non confundar in aeternum,_" he quoted half aloud.

And then could not forbear to smile, gravely and somewhat sadly,
registering the deep pathos of the fact that the majestic hymn of praise
and thanksgiving, dedicated by the use of Christendom throughout centuries
to the celebration of highest triumph, still ends brokenly with a
childlike sob of shrinking, of entreaty, and very human pain.

Meditating upon which, and upon much implied by it, not only of sorrow but
of consolation for whoso is not afraid to understand, Iglesias moved
onward. But so closely do things absurd and trivial jostle things august
and of profound significance in daily happenings--he was speedily aroused
from meditation and his attention claimed by example of quite another
order of pathos to that suggested by the concluding verses of the _Te
Deum_. Some little way ahead a brown-painted furniture van was backed
against the curb. From the cave-like interior of it coatless white-aproned
men bore a miscellaneous collection of goods--among others a battered
dapple-grey rocking-horse with flowing mane and tail--across the yard-wide
strip of garden, and in at the front door of a small old-fashioned house.
Bass mats were strewn upon the pavement. Sheets of packing paper
pirouetted down the roadway before the wind. While, standing in the midst
of the litter, watching the process of unloading with perplexed and even
agitated interest, was a whimsical figure--large of girth, short of limb,
convex where the accredited lines of beauty demand, if not concavity, at
least a refined flatness of surface.

The Latin, unlike the Anglo-Saxon, does not consider it necessary as
soon as adolescence is past to extirpate his heart; or, failing successful
performance of that heroic operation, strictly to limit the activities
of it to his amours, legitimate or otherwise. Hence Dominic Iglesias
felt no shame that the sight of his old plaything, or of his old
school-fellow--now unhappily estranged from and suspicious of him--should
provoke in him a great tenderness. Upon the battered rocking-horse his
heart rode away to the dear sheltered happiness of childhood, while
towards his former school-fellow it went forth in unmixed kindliness. For
it appeared to him that for one who had so lately held converse with
approaching death, it would be a very scandal of light-minded pettiness to
nourish resentment against any fellow creature. In near prospect of the
eternal judgment, private and temporal judgment can surely afford to
declare a universal amnesty in respect of personal slights and injuries.
Therefore, after but a moment's hesitation, he went on, laid his hand upon
George Lovegrove's shoulder, and called him affectionately by name.

"Dominic!" the latter cried, and stood staring. "Well to be sure--you did
surprise me! To think of meeting you just by accident to-day, like this!"

He grew furiously red, gladness and embarrassment struggling within him.
Conscientiously he strove to be faithful to the menagerie of ignorances
and prejudices which he misnamed his convictions. For here was the
representative of the Accursed Thing--persecutor, enemy of truth, of
patriotism, of marriage, worshipper of senseless idols; but, alas! how he
loved that representative! How he honoured his intelligence, admired his
person, coveted his companionship! Beholding Iglesias once again, George
Lovegrove rejoiced as at the finding of lost treasure. Hence, perplexed,
perspiring, lamentably squinting, yet with the innocent half-shy ecstasy
of a girl looking upon her recovered lover, he gazed up into Mr. Iglesias'
face.

"I give you my word I was never more taken aback in my life," he
protested. "As it happened I was just thinking about old times, observing
that some family is moving into your former house. But I had no notion of
meeting you. Positively I am unable to grasp the fact. I have not a word
to say to you, because I require to say so much. I know there is a great
deal which needs explanation on my part. And then your calling me by my
name, too! I declare it went right through me, as a voice from the grave
might."

"Put aside explanations," Iglesias replied indulgently. "You are not going
to quarrel with me any more--let that suffice."

"No, I cannot quarrel with you any more. I am sure I don't know whether it
is unprincipled or not, but I cannot do it."

Regardless of observation, he pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his
face.

"If it is unprincipled I must just let it go." he said, quite recklessly.
"I cannot help myself. I give you my word, Dominic, I have held out as
long as I could."

This appeal to Iglesias, as against himself, appeared to him abundantly
unaffected and ingenuous.

"I cannot but believe you will find the consequences of renewed
intercourse with me less damaging than you suppose," he answered, smiling.

"That is what the wife says," the other man stated. "She has veered round
completely in her opinion, has the wife. I do not understand why, except
that Mrs. Porcher and Miss Hart and she seem to have fallen out. The
workings of females' minds are very difficult to follow, even after years
of marriage, you know, Dominic. Opposition to one of their own sex will
make them warmly embrace opinions you supposed were just those which they
most strongly condemned. She has taken a very high tone, for some time
past, about the Cedar Lodge ladies, has the wife. And when I came in, the
evening of her last at-home day, I found her sadly upset at having heard
from one of them that you were about to leave. She implied that I was to
blame; whereas I can truthfully say my conduct throughout has been largely
influenced by the fear of hurting her feelings." The speaker looked
helplessly at Mr. Iglesias. "Of course we do not expect the same reticence
in speech from females we require of ourselves. Still, such unfounded
accusations are rather galling."

"I cannot be otherwise than very grateful to Mrs. Lovegrove for espousing
my cause, you see," Iglesias replied. This confused and gentle being,
struggling with the complexities of friendship, religious prejudice, and
feminine methods and amenities, was wholly moving. "Circumstances have
arisen which have made me decide to give up my rooms at Cedar Lodge.
To-night is the last upon which I shall occupy them. But I do not wish
Mrs. Lovegrove to be under any misapprehension regarding my hostess and
her companion. I have nothing to complain of. During my long residence
they have treated me with courtesy and consideration. I wish them nothing
but good. Still the time has come, I feel, for leaving Cedar Lodge."

Here the worthy George's imagination indulged in wild flights. Visions of
a hideous and rugged cell--of the sort known exclusively to serial
melodrama--and of a beautiful woman, in voluminous rose-red skirts and a
costly overcoat, presented themselves to him in amazing juxtaposition.

"Of course, I have forfeited all right to question you as to your plans,
Dominic," he said hurriedly and humbly. "I quite realise that. I believed
I was acting on principle in keeping away from you, all the more because
it pained me terribly to do so. I believed I was being consistent. Now I
begin to fear I was only obstinate and cowardly. Your kindness of manner
has completely unmanned me. I see how superior you are in liberality to
myself. And so it cuts me to the quick, more than ever, to part from you."

"Why should we part?" Iglesias asked.

"But you are going away. The wife told me she heard you were
leaving London altogether; whether to--I hardly like to mention the
supposition--to join some brotherhood or--or, to be married, she did not
know."

Mr. Iglesias shook his head, smiling sweetly and bravely.

"Oh! no, no, my dear fellow," he answered. "Rumour must have been rather
unpardonably busy with my name. I fear I am about equally ill-fitted for
monastic and for married life. The day of splendid ventures, whether of
religion or of love, is over for me; and I shall die, as I have lived, a
bachelor and a layman. Nor shall I cease to be your neighbour, for I am
only returning here"--he pointed to the open door, in at which coatless
white-aproned men carried that miscellaneous collection of furniture--"to
the little old Holland Street house. Lately I have had a great craving
upon me to be at home again--alone, save for one or two precious
friendships; with leisure to read and to think; and, in as far as my poor
mental powers permit, to become a humble student of the awe-inspiring
philosophy--reconciling things natural and supernatural--of which the
Catholic Church is the exponent, her creeds its textbook, her ceremonies
and ritual the divinely appointed symbols of its secret truths." Iglesias'
expression was exalted, his speech penetrated by enthusiasm. "It would be
profitable and happy," he said, "before the final auditing of accounts, to
be a little better versed in this wonderful and living wisdom."

And George Lovegrove stood watching him, bewildered, agitated, full of
doubt and inquiry.

"Ah! it is all beyond me, quite beyond me," he exclaimed presently.
"Mistaken or not, I see you are in touch with thoughts altogether outside
my experience and comprehension. I supposed Romanism could only be held by
uneducated and superstitious persons. I see I was wrong. I ask your
pardon, Dominic. I see I quite undervalued it." Then his manner changed,
quick perception and consequent distress seizing him. "Ah! but you are
ill. That is the meaning of it all. You are ill. Now I come to observe
you, I see how thin and drawn your face is. How shall I ever forgive
myself for not finding that out sooner! I have differed from you and
blamed you. I have sulked, and thought bitterly of you, and avoided you.
I have even been envious, hearing how successfully you carried through
affairs this anxious time at the bank. I have been a contemptibly
mean-spirited individual. No, I can never forgive myself. I have found you
again, only to lose you. You are in bad health. You have been suffering,
and I never thought to inquire about that. I never knew it."

But Dominic Iglesias made effort to comfort him, speaking not
uncheerfully, determining even to fight the fatigue and weakness which, as
he could not but own, daily increased on him, if only for the sake of this
faithful and simple adherent.

"Perhaps the sands are running rather low," he said; "but that does not
greatly matter. The conditions are in process of alteration. Now that I am
free of my City work, the strain is practically over. With care and quiet,
the sands that remain in the glass may run very slowly. I have a peaceful
time in prospect, here in my old home. When I left here, eight years ago,
I could not make up my mind to part with any of our family belongings, so
I warehoused all the contents of the house, save those which I took to
furnish my rooms at Cedar Lodge. Now these half-forgotten possessions see
the light once more. This in itself should constitute a staying of the
running sands, a putting back of the hands of the clock. Then I have two
good servants to care for me. I am fortunate in that. And your friendship
is restored to me. I should be ungrateful if I did not live on for a while
to enjoy all this kindly circumstance. So do not grieve. There are many
after-dinner pipes to be smoked, many talks to be talked yet.--Come into
the house, and see it as you used to know it when we both were young.
Surely it is a good omen that you, my earliest friend, should be my first
visitor when I come home?"




CHAPTER XXXV


De Courcy Smyth was not drunk, but he had been drinking--persistently
nipping, as his custom was in times of mental excitement, in the
fallacious hope of keeping up courage and steadying irritable nerves. The
series of moods usually resultant on such recourse to spirituous liquors,
followed one another with clock-work regularity. He was alternately
hysterically elated, preternaturally moral, offensively quarrelsome,
maudlin to the point of tears. The first _matinee_ of his
long-promised play had prospered but very ill, notwithstanding large
advertisement and free list. The second had prospered even worse.
Mercifully disposed persons, slipping out between the acts, had been
careful not to return. Less amiably disposed ones had remained to titter
or hiss. Failure had been written in capital letters across the whole
performance--and deservedly, in the estimation of every one save the
unhappy author himself. The play had perished in the very act of birth.

But of this tragic termination to so many extravagant hopes Dominic
Iglesias was still ignorant, as he entered the dismantled sitting-room at
Cedar Lodge that same night a little after half-past ten o'clock. He had
dined in the old house in Holland Street; served by Frederick, the
German-Swiss valet, who, some weeks previously, hearing of his intended
departure, had announced his intention of "bettering himself," had given
Mrs. Porcher warning, and, in moving terms and three languages, implored
employment of Iglesias, declaring that the other gentlemen resident at
Cedar Lodge were "no class," their clothes utterly unworthy of his powers
of brushing and folding.

Iglesias stayed on in Holland Street until late, the charm and gentleness
of old associations, the sight of familiar objects, the gladness of
restored friendship with George Lovegrove working upon him to
thankfulness. He was tranquil in spirit, serene with the calm twilight
serenity of the strong who have learned the secret of detachment, and,
who, while welcoming all glad and gracious occurrences, have schooled
themselves to resignation, and, in the affairs of this world, do neither
greatly fear nor greatly hope. And it was in this spirit he had made his
way back to Cedar Lodge and entered the square panelled sitting-room. But,
the door closed, he paused, aware of some sinister influence, some unknown
yet repulsive presence. The room was nearly dark, the gas being lowered to
a pin-point on either side the mantelpiece. Dominic moved across to turn
it up, and in so doing stumbled over an unexpected obstacle. De Courcy
Smith, who had been dozing uneasily in the one remaining armchair, sat
upright with an oath.

"What are you at, you swine!" he shouted. Then as the light shone forth he
made an effort to recover himself.

"It's hardly necessary to announce your advent by kicking me, Mr.
Iglesias," he said thickly, and without attempting to rise from his seat.
"Not but that there is an appropriateness in that graceful form of
introduction. Only a kick from the benevolent patron, who professed
himself so charitably disposed towards me, was required to make up the sum
of outrage which has been my portion to-day.--Have you seen the theatrical
items in the evening papers?" With trembling hands he spread out a
newspaper upon his knees. "See the way that dirty reptile, Percy Gerrard,
who succeeded me upon _The Daily Bulletin_, has chopped me and my
play to mincemeat, cut bits of live flesh out of me and fried them in
filth, and washed down my wounds with the vitriol of hypocritical
compassion and good advice? That is the style of recognition a really
first-class work of art, fit to rank with the classics, with Wycherley,
and Congreve, and Sheridan, or Lytton--for there are qualities of all
these very dissimilar masters in my writing--gets from the present-day
press. As I have told you all along, the critics and playwrights hate
me because they fear me. I have never spared them. I have exposed them and
their ignorance, and want of scholarship, in print. They know I spoke the
truth. Their hatred is witness to my veracity. They have been nursing
their venom for years. Now with one consent they pour it forth. It is a
vile plot and conspiracy. They were sworn to swamp me, so they formed a
ring. They did not care what they spent so long as they succeeded in
crushing me. Every one has been bought, miserably, scandalously bought.
This is the only conceivable explanation of the reception my play has met
with. They got at the members of my company. My actors played better at
first, better at rehearsal. Yesterday and to-day they have played like a
row of wooden ninepins, of straw-stuffed scarecrows, of rot-stricken
idiots! They missed their cues, and forgot their lines, or pretended to do
so; and then had the infernal impertinence to giggle and gag, blast them!
I heard them. I could have screamed. I tried to stop them; and the
stage-manager swore at me in the wings, and the scene-shifters laughed. It
was a hideous nightmare. The audience laughed--the sound of it is in my
ears now, and it tortures me, for it was not natural laughter. It was not
spontaneous--how could it be so? It was simply part of this iniquitous
conspiracy to ruin me. It was hired mockery, bought and paid for, the
mockery of subsidised traitors, liars, imbeciles, the inhuman mockery of
grinning apes!"

He crushed the newspaper together with both hands, flung it across the
room, and broke into hysterical weeping.

"For my play is a masterpiece," he wailed. "It is a work of genius. No
other man living could have written it. Yet it is damned by a brainless
public and vindictive press, while I know and they know--they must know,
the fact is self-evident--that it is great, nothing less than great."

During this harangue Dominic Iglesias stood immovable, facing the speaker,
but looking down, not at him, rigid in attitude, silent. Any attempt to
stem the torrent of the wretched man's speech would have been futile.
Dominic judged it kindest just to wait, letting passion tear him till, by
force of its own violence, it had worn itself out. Then, but not till
them, it might be helpful to intervene. Still the exhibition was a very
painful one, putting a heavy strain upon the spectator. For be a fellow
creature never so displeasing in nature and in habit, never so cankered by
vanity and self-love, it cannot be otherwise than hideous to see him upon
the rack. And that de Courcy Smyth was very actually upon the rack--a rack
well deserved, may be, and of his own constructing, but which wrenched his
every joint to the agony of dislocation nevertheless--there could be no
manner of doubt. Coming as conclusion to the long day, to the peaceful
evening--the thought of the Lady of the Windswept Dust, moreover, and her
fortunes so eminently and presently just now in the balance, in his
mind--the whole situation was horrible to Dominic Iglesias.

But Smyth's mood changed, his tears ceasing as incontinently as they had
begun. He ceased to slouch and writhe, passed his hands across his
blood-shot eyes, drew himself up in his chair, began to snarl, even to
swagger.

"I forget myself, and forget you, too, Mr. Iglesias--which is annoying,"
he said; "for you are about the last person from whom I could expect, or
should desire to receive, sympathy. Persons of my world, scholars and
idealists, and persons of your world, money-grubbing materialists, can, in
the nature of things, have very little in common. There is a great gulf
fixed between them. I beg your pardon for having so far forgotten myself
as to ignore that fact, and talked on subjects incomprehensible to you.
What follows, however, will be more in your line, I imagine, and it is
this which has made me come here to-night. You realise that your
investment has turned out an unfortunate one? You have lost, irretrievably
lost, your money."

"I was not wholly unprepared for that," Dominic answered. His temper was
beginning to rise. Sodden with drink, maddened by failure, hardly
accountable for his words or actions, still the man's tone was rather too
offensive for endurance. "I had made full provision for such a
contingency. I accept the loss. Pray do not let it trouble you."

"Oh! you accept it, do you? You were prepared for it?" Smyth broke in.
"You can afford to throw way a cool three hundred pounds--the expenses
will amount to that at least in the bulk. How very agreeable for you!
Your late operations in the City must have been surprisingly profitable.
I was not aware, until now, that we had the honour of numbering a
millionaire among us at Cedar Lodge. But let me tell you this extremely
superior tone does not please me, Mr. Iglesias. It smells of insult. I
warn you, you had better be a little careful. Even a miserable persecuted
pauper like myself can make it unpleasant for those who insult him. I must
request you to remember that I am a gentleman by birth, and that I have
the feelings of my class where my personal honour is concerned. Do you
suppose I do not know perfectly well that the benevolent attitude you have
seen fit to assume towards me has been a blind, from first to last; and
that every penny you have advanced me until now, as well as the three
hundred pounds, the loss of which you so amiably beg me not to let trouble
me, is hush-money? Yes, hush-money, I repeat, the price of my silence
regarding your intrigue with my wife--my wife who calls herself--"

"We will introduce no woman's name into this conversation, if you please,"
Iglesias interrupted sternly.

The limit of things pardonable had been passed. His face was white and
keen as a sword. The weight of years and of failing health had vanished,
burned up by fierce disgust and anger, as is mist by the sun-heat. He was
young, arrogant in bearing, careless of consequence or of danger as some
fifteenth-century finely bred fighting man face to face with his enemy and
traducer, who, given honourable opportunity, he would kill or be killed
by, without faintest scruple or remorse. And of this temper of mind his
aspect was so eloquent that de Courcy Smyth, muddled with liquor though he
was, seeing him, was seized with panic. He scrambled to his feet, flung
himself behind the chair, clinging to the back of it for support.

"Don't look at me like that, you Spanish devil!" he whimpered. "You
paralyse me. You hypnotise me. My brain is splitting. You're drawing the
life out of me. I shall go mad. If you come a step nearer I'll make a
scandal. I'll call for help. Ah! God in heaven, who's that?"

Only the housemaid entering, salver in hand, and leaving the door wide
open behind her. Upon the landing with out, Farge and Worthington, in
comic attitudes, stood at attention.

"A telegram for you, sir. Is the boy to wait?" she inquired, in a stifled
voice. "She could hardly keep a straight face," as she reported downstairs
subsequently, "that ridiculous Farge was so full of his jokes."

Iglesias tore open the yellow envelope and held the telegraph-form to the
light.

"Glorious luck. Happy as a queen. Come to supper after performance
to-morrow. Love. Poppy,"

His face softened.

"No answer," he said, and turned purposing to speak some word of mercy to
wretched de Courcy Smyth. But the latter had slunk out at the open door,
while Mr. Farge, in an ungovernable paroxysm of humour--levelled at the
departing housemaid--effectually covered his retreat by cake-walking, with
very high knee action, the length of the landing, playing appropriate
dance-music, the while, upon an imaginary banjo in the shape of
Worthington's new crook-handled walking stick.

For some time Dominic Iglesias heard shuffling, nerveless footsteps moving
to and fro in the room overhead. Then Smyth threw himself heavily upon his
bed. The wire-wove mattress creaked, and creaked again twice. Unbroken
silence followed, and Iglesias breathed more easily, hoping the miserable
being slept. For him, Iglesias, there was no sleep. His body was too
tired. His mind too vividly and painfully awake. He lay down, it is true,
since he did not care to remain in the dismantled sitting-room or occupy
the chair in which de Courcy Smyth had sat. But, throughout the night, he
stared at the darkness and heard the hours strike. At sunset the wind
had dropped dead. In the small hours it began to rise, and before dawn to
freshen, veering to another quarter. Softly at first, and then with richer
diapason, the cedar tree greeted its mysterious comrade, singing of
far-distant times and places, and of the permanence of nature as against
the fitful evanescent life of man. That husky singing soothed Dominic
Iglesias, and calmed him, assuring him that in the hands of the Almighty
are all things, small and great, past, present, and to come. There is
neither haste, nor omission, nor accident, nor oversight in the divine
plan; but that plan is large beyond the possibility of human intellect to
grasp or comprehend, therefore humble faith is also highest wisdom.

As the dawn quickened into day Dominic drew aside the curtain and looked
out. Behind the dark branches, where they cleared the housetops and met
the open sky, thrown wide upward to the zenith, was the rose-scarlet of
sunrise, holding, as it seemed to him, at once the splendour of battle
and the peace of crowned achievement and--was it but a pretty conceit or a
truth of happiest import?--the colour of certain flaring omnibus
knifeboard bills and the colour of a certain woman's name.




CHAPTER XXXVI


The narrow lane, running back at right angles to the great thoroughfare,
was filled with blurred yellowish light and covered in with gloom,
low-hanging and impenetrable. The high, blank buildings on either side of
it looked like the perpendicular walls of a tunnel, the black roof they
apparently supported being as solid and substantial as themselves. The
effect thereby produced was suspect and prison-like, as of a space walled
in and closed from open air and day. Outside the stage entrance of the
Twentieth Century Theatre a small crowd had collected and formed up in two
parallel lines across the pavement to the curb, against which a smart
single brougham and some half a dozen four-wheelers and hansoms were
drawn up. The crowd, which gathered and broke only to gather again, was
composed for the main part of persons of the better artisan class,
respectable, soberly habited, evidently awaiting the advent of relations
employed within the theatre. There was also a sprinkling of showy young
women, attended by undersized youths flashily dressed. On the fringes of
it night-birds, male and female, of evil aspect, loitered, watchful of
possible prey; while two or three gentlemen, correct, highly-civilised,
stood smoking, each with the air of studied indifference which defies
attempted recognition on the part of friend or foe.

And among these last Dominic Iglesias must be counted; though, in his
case, indifference was not assumed but real. His surroundings were novel,
it is true, and produced on him clear impressions both pictorial and
moral; but those impressions were of his surroundings in and for
themselves, rather than in any doubtfulness of their relation to himself.
For his mind was occupied with problems painful in character and difficult
of solution; and to the said problems, heightening the emotional strain of
them, his surroundings--the sense of feverish life, of all-encompassing
restless humanity; the figures anxious, degraded, of questionable purpose
or merely frivolous, which started into momentary distinctness; the scraps
of conversation, caught in passing, instinct with suggestion, squalid or
passionate; along with the ceaseless tramp of footsteps, and tumult of the
great thoroughfare just now packed with the turn-out of neighbouring
places of entertainment--supplied a background penetratingly appropriate.

For a good half-hour Mr. Iglesias stood there. At intervals the doors of
the stage entrance swung open, causing a movement of interest and comment
among the crowd. One by one hansoms and four-wheelers, obtaining fares,
rattled away over the stones. Yet the Lady of the Windswept Dust tarried.
It grew late, and Iglesias greatly desired her coming, greatly desired to
speak with her, and speaking to find approximate solution, at least, of
some of the problems which lay so heavy upon his mind. Meanwhile, the
crowd melted and vanished, leaving him alone in the blurred yellowish
light beneath the low-hanging roof of impenetrable gloom, save for the
haunting presence of some few of those terrible human birds of prey.

He was about to turn away also, not particularly relishing the remaining
company, when, with a rush, Poppy was beside him, in stately garments of
black velvet and glimmering tissue of silver; her head and shoulders
draped with something of daring and magnificence, in her blue-purple
jewelled dragon-embroidered scarf. She caught Iglesias' right hand in both
of hers and held it a moment against her breast. And during that brief
interval he registered the fact that, notwithstanding her beauty, the
force of her personality and richness of her dress, she did not look out
of place in this somewhat cut-throat alley, with the questionable sights
and sounds of midnight London all about her; but vivid, exultant, true
daughter of great cities, fearless manipulator of the very varied
opportunities they offer, past-master, for joy and sorrow, in the curious
arts they teach.

"Get into the brougham, dear man," she said, "and let me talk. There, put
up the window on the traffic side. I have been in the liveliest worry
about you. Had the house turned out of windows to find you--and gave
things in general the deuce of a time.--The brougham's comfortable, isn't
it? Fallowfeild's jobbed it for the winter for me.--All the same I played
like an angel, out of pure desperation, thinking you might be ill. I made
the audience cry big, big tears, bless 'em. And it wasn't the part--not
a bit of it. It was you, just simply you.--And then I dawdled talking to
Antony Hammond about some lines in the second act I want altered, so as to
let myself down easy before digesting the disappointment of driving back
to Bletchworth Mansions alone. I wanted so very badly to have you see me.
Beloved and most faithless of beings, why the mischief didn't you come?"

And Iglesias sitting beside her watching her joyous face, crowned by her
dark hair, set in the gleaming folds of her jewelled scarf, as passing
lights revealed it clearly, or shifting left it in soft shadow, divined
rather than actually seen, became sadly conscious that the problems which
oppressed him were not only hard of solution but hard of statement
likewise. It seemed heartless to propound them in this, her hour of
success. Yet, unless he was deeply mistaken, the statement of them must
tell for emancipation and relief in the end.

"The play has gone well, and you are happy?" he asked her.

"Gorgeously--I grant you I was a bit nervous as to whether during these
years of--well--love in idleness, I had not lost touch with my art. But I
haven't. I have only matured in mind and in method. I am not conceited,
dear man, truly I am not; but I am neither too lazy nor too modest to use
my brains. What I know I am not afraid to apply. I've very little theory,
but a precious deal of practice--and that's the way to get on. Don't talk
about your ideas--just use them for all you're worth.--But this is beside
the mark. You're trying to head me off. Why didn't you come?"

"I would gladly have come," Iglesias answered. "My disappointment has been
quite as great as yours."

"Bless your heart!" Poppy murmured under her breath.

"But it was impossible for me to come. I was detained until it was too
late." He paused, uncertain how best to say that which had to be said.

"Oh! fiddle!" Poppy cried, with a lift of her head. "I stand first. You
ought not to have let yourself be detained. After all, it's not every day
someone you know blazes from a farthing dip into a star of the first
magnitude. You might very well have crowded other things aside. I feel a
trifle hurt, dear man, really I do."

"Believe me, no ordinary matter would have prevented my coming," Iglesias
answered. To his relief the carriage just then turned into the comparative
peace of Langham Place. It became possible to speak softly. "There was
a death in the house last night," he went on, "that of a person with whom
I have been rather closely associated. He died under circumstances
demanding investigations of a distressing character. No one save myself
was qualified, or perhaps willing, to assume the responsibility of calling
in the authorities."

Iglesias glanced at his companion, conscious that while he spoke her
attitude and humour had altered considerably. She was motionless. He saw
her profile, dark against the square light of window-glass. Her mouth was
slightly open, as with intensity of attention.

"Well--well--what then?" she said.

"The man had just suffered a heavy reverse. He had staked all his hopes,
all his future, upon a single venture. It proved a failure. He could not
accept the fact, and believed himself the victim of gross injustice and of
organised conspiracy."

"Do you believe it, too?"

"No," Iglesias answered. "I have an immense pity for him, as who would
not. Still, I am compelled to believe that failure came from within,
rather than from without. He overrated his own powers."

Poppy held up her hand imperiously. "Wait half a minute," she said, in an
oddly harsh voice. Leaning forward she put down the front glass and called
to the coachman:--"Don't go to Bletchworth Mansions. Drive on. Never mind
where, so long as you keep to empty streets. Drive on and on--do you
hear?--till I tell you to stop."

She put the window up again and settled herself back in her place,
dragging the scarf from off her head and baring her throat. She looked
full at Mr. Iglesias, her face showing ghostly white against the dark
upholstery of the carriage. Her eyes were wide with question and with
fear, which was also, in some strange way, hope.

"Now you can speak, dear friend," she said quite steadily. "I shall be
glad to hear the whole of it, though it is an ugly story. The man was
miserable, and he is dead, and the circumstances of his death point
to--what--suicide?"

In reply Iglesias told her how that morning, the servants failing to get
any response to their knocking, the upper part of the house being,
moreover, pervaded by a sickening smell of gas, help had been called in;
and, de Courcy Smyth's door being forced open, he had been found lying,
fully clothed, stark and cold upon his bed, an empty phial of morphia and
an empty glass on the table beside him, both gas-jets turned full on
though not alight.

At the top of Portland Place the coachman took his way northwestward,
first skirting the outer ring of Regent's Park and then making the
gradually ascending slope of the Finchley Road. The detached houses on
either side, standing back in their walled gardens, were mostly blind.
Only here and there, behind drawn curtains, a window glowed, telling of
intimate drama gallant or mournful within. The wide grey pavements were
deserted; the place arrestingly quiet, save for the occasional heavy tread
of a passing policeman on beat, and the rhythmical trot of the horse. And
the Lady of the Windswept Dust was quiet likewise, looking straight before
her, sitting stiffly upright, her hands clasped in her lap, the shifting
lights and shadows playing queerly over her face and her bare neck,
causing her to appear unsubstantial and indefinite as a figure in a dream.
Yet a strange energy possessed her and emanated from her, so that the
atmosphere about her was electric, oppressive to Iglesias as with a
brooding of storm. Her very quietness was agitating, weighed with meaning
which challenged his imagination and even his powers of reticence and
self-control. Opposite Swiss Cottage Station, where the main road forks,
a string of market waggons--slouching, drowsy car-men, backed by a pale
green wall of glistening cabbages, nodding above their slow-moving
teams--passed, with a jingle of brass-mounted harness and grind of wheels.
This roused Poppy, and the storm broke.

"Dominic," she said breathlessly, "do you at all know that you've just
told me means to me?"

"I have never known positively until now; but it was impossible that I
should not have entertained suspicions."

"Did he--you know who I mean--ever speak of me?"

"I think," Iglesias said, "he came very near doing so, more than once. But
I put a stop to the conversation."

"You frightened him," Poppy rejoined. "I know one could do that. It was a
last resource, a hateful one. Is there anything so difficult to forgive as
being driven to be cruel? One was bound to be cruel in self-defence, or
one would have been stifled, utterly degraded by self-contempt, bled to
death not only in respect of money but of self-esteem."

She threw up her hands with a gesture at once fierce and despairing.

"Oh! the weak, the weak," she cried, "of how many crimes they are the
authors! Crimes more particularly abominable when the weak one is the man,
and woman--poor brute--is strong."

She settled herself sideways in the corner of the carriage, turning her
face once more full upon her companion.

"Look here," she said, "I don't want to whitewash myself. What I've done
I've done. I don't pretend it's pretty or innocent, or that I haven't
jolly well got to pay the price of it--though I think a good deal has been
paid by now. But it seems to me my real crime was in marrying him, rather
than in leaving him. It was a crime against love--love, which alone, if
you've any real sense of the inherent decencies of things, makes marriage
otherwise than an outrage upon a woman's pride and her virtue. But, then,
one doesn't know all that when one's barely out of one's teens. And, you
see, like a fool I took the first comer out of bravado, just that people
mightn't see how awfully hard hit I was by his people interfering and
preventing my marrying the poor, dear boy who gave me this"--Poppy spread
out the end of her dragon scarf--"I've told you about him.--Stage people
are absurdly simple in some ways, you know. They live in such a world of
pretences and fictions that they lose their sense of fact, or rather they
never develop it. They're awfully easily taken in. Words go a tremendous
long way with them. And de Courcy could talk. He was appallingly fluent,
specially on the subject of himself. He made be believe he was rather
wonderful, and I wanted to believe he was wonderful. I wanted to believe
he was all the geniuses in creation rolled into one. All the more I wanted
to believe it because I wasn't one scrap in love with him."

Poppy beat with one hand almost roughly on Mr. Iglesias' arm.

"Do you see, do you see, do you see?" she repeated. "Do you understand?
I want you so badly to understand."

And he answered her gently and gravely: "Do not be afraid, dear friend. I
see with your eyes. I feel with your heart. As far as one human being can
enter into and share the experience of another, I do understand."

"But the nuisance is," she went on, the corners of her mouth taking a
wicked twist, "you know so very much more about a man after you've married
him. Other people are inclined to forget that sometimes. Consuming egoism
is hideous at close quarters. It comes out in a thousand ways, in mean
little tyrannies and absurd jealousies which would never have entered into
one's head.--I don't want to go into all that. It's better forgot.--Only
they piled up and up, till the shadow of them shut out the sunshine; and
I got so bored, so madly and intolerably bored. You see, I had tried to
believe in him at first. In self-defence I had done so, and stood by him,
and done my very best to put him through. But when I began to understand
that there was nothing to stand by or put through, that his talent was not
talent at all, but merely a vain man's longing to possess talent--well,
the situation became pretty bad. I tried to be civil. I tried to hold my
tongue, indeed I did. But to be bullied and grumbled at, and expected to
work, so as to give him leisure and means for the development of gifts
which didn't exist--it wasn't good enough."

Poppy put up her hands and pushed the masses of her hair from her
forehead. And all the while the shifting lights and shadows played over
her white face and bare neck, and the horse trotted on, past closed shops
and curtained windows, farther out of London and into the night.

"He didn't do anything which the world calls vicious," she continued
presently. A great dreariness had come into the tones of her voice. "He
was faithful to me, as the world counts faithfulness, simply because he
didn't care for women--except for philandering with sentimental sillies
who thought him an unappreciated eighth wonder of the world, and pawed
over and pitied him. La! La! The mere thought of it makes me sick! But he
was too much in love with himself to be capable of even an animal passion
for anybody else. And he made a great point of his virtue. I heard a lot
about it--oh! a lot!"

For a minute or two Poppy sat silent. Then she turned to Mr. Iglesias,
smiling, as those smile who refuse submission to some cruel pain.

"I wasn't born bad, dear man," she said, "and I held out longer than most
women in my profession would, where morals are easy and it's lightly come
and lightly go in respect of lovers and love. But one fine day I packed up
my traps and cleared out. He'd been whining for years, and some little
thing he said or did--I really forget exactly what--raised Cain in me, and
I thought I'd jolly well give him something to whine about. I knew
perfectly well he wouldn't divorce me. He wanted me too much, at the end
of a string, to torment, and to get money from when times were bad. Not
that I cared for a divorce. I consider it the clumsiest invention out for
setting wrongs right. I have too great a respect for marriage, which
ought, if it means anything, to mean motherhood and children, and a clean,
wholesome start in life for the second generation. When a woman breaks
away and crosses the lines, she only makes bad worse, in my opinion, by
the hypocritical respectability of a marriage while her husband is still
alive. Let's be honest sinners any way, if sin we must."

Again she paused, looking backward in thought, seeing and hearing things
which, for the honour of others, it was kindest not to repeat. The
carriage moved slowly, the horse slackening its pace in climbing the last
steep piece of hill which leads to the pond on Hampstead Heath.

"And now it's over," Poppy said, letting her hands drop in her lap. "Done
with. The poor wretched thing's dead--has killed himself. That is a
fitting conclusion. He was always his own worst enemy.--Well, as far as I
am concerned, let him rest in peace."

"Amen," Iglesias responded, "so let him rest. 'Shall not the judge of all
the world do right,' counting his merits as well as his demerits, making
all just excuses for his lapses and wrong-doings; knowing, as we can never
know, exactly how far he was and was not accountable for his own and for
others' sins. And now, dear friend, as you have said, this long misery is
over and done with. Whatever remains of practical business you can leave
safely to me. His memory shall be shielded as far as foresight and
sympathy can shield it, and your name need not appear."

The Lady of the Windswept Dust took his hand and held it.

"I don't know," she said brokenly, "why all this should all come upon
you."

"For a very simple reason," he answered. "What did you tell me yourself?
You stand first. And that is true."

But it may be remarked in passing that there are limits to the passive
obedience of even the best-trained of men-servants. Those of Poppy's
coachman had been reached. At the top of the hill he drew up, vigorously
determined to drive no farther into the wilderness, without renewed and
very distinct information as to why and where he went, perceiving which
Dominic Iglesias opened the carriage door and stepped out.

"The night is fine and dry," he said. "Let us walk a little, and then let
us drive home. You have your work to-morrow--or, rather, to-day--and you
must have a reasonable amount of rest first. The stream of your life has
been arrested, diverted from its natural channel; but it still runs strong
and clear yet. You have genius, real, not imagined, so you must husband
your energies.--Come and walk. Let the air soothe and calm you; and then,
leaving all the past in Almighty God's safe keeping, go home and rest."

Here the high-road stretches along the ridge of the hill, a giant
causeway, the broken land of the open heath falling away sharply to left
and right. It was windless. The sky was covered, and the atmosphere,
though not foggy at this height, was thick as with smoke; so that the
road, with its long avenue of sparse-set lamps--dwindling in the extreme
distance to faintest sparks--was as a pale bridge thrown across the void
of black unsounded space. All, save the road itself, the lamps, and seats,
and broken fringe of grass edging the raised footpath of it, was formless
and vague, peopled by shapes, dark against darkness, such as the eye
itself fearfully produces in straining to penetrate unyielding obscurity.
The effect was one of intense isolation, of divorce from humanity and the
works and ways of it, so present and overpowering it might well seem that,
reaching the far end of that pale bridge, the wayfarer would part company
with the things of time altogether and pass into another state of being.

And this so worked upon Poppy that, some fifty yards along the causeway,
her black and silver skirts gathered ankle-high about her, she stopped,
drawing very close to Iglesias and laying her hand upon his arm.

"Listen to the silence," she said. "Look at the emptiness. I don't quite
like it, even with you. It's too suggestive of death, death with no sure
hope of life beyond it.--I am quite good now, quite sane and reasonable.
I have put aside all bitterness. I'll never say another hard word of him,
or, in as far as I can, think a hard thought."

Then turning, suddenly she gave a cry, perceiving that east and south
all London lay below them--formless, too, indefinite, enormous, a City of
the Plains, unseen in detail but indicated through the gloom as a vast
semi-circle of smouldering fire.

Poppy stretched out both arms, letting her splendid draperies trail in the
dust.

"Ah! how I love it, how I love it," she cried. "Let us go back, dear man.
For it belongs to me and I belong to it. In the name of my art I must try
conclusions with it. I must play to it, and conquer it, and enchant, and
possess it, since I am free at last--I am free."




CHAPTER XXXVII


Serena's manner, though gracious, was lofty, almost regal. She had,
indeed, lately looked upon crowned heads, and the glory of them seemed,
somehow, to have rubbed off on her.

"Yes," she said, "I came up for the Queen's funeral. Lady Samuelson felt
it was a thing I ought not to miss, and I agreed with her. It was
inconvenient to leave home, because I had a number of engagements. Still,
I felt I might regret it afterwards if I did not see it. And then, of
course, Lady Samuelson was so kind the year before last, when I had so
very much to worry me, that I feel I owe it to her to stay with her
whenever she asks me to do so. Where did you see the procession from,
Rhoda?"

"Well, on the whole I thought it better to remain at home," Mrs. Lovegrove
confessed, "though Georgie was most pressing I should go with him. You are
slender, Serena, and that makes a great deal of difference in going about.
But I find crowds and excitement very trying. And then it must all have
been very affecting and solemn. I doubted if I could witness it without
giving way too much and troubling others. It is mortifying to feel you are
spoiling the pleasure of those that are with you, and I wanted poor
Georgie to enjoy himself as much as he could."

"In that case it was certainly better to remain at home," Serena rejoined.
"I have my feelings very much under control. Even when I was quite a child
that used to be said of me. It used to irritate Susan."

"Susan has a more impetuous nature," Mrs. Lovegrove observed. The day of
domestic eclipse was happily passed. She had come into her own again;
consequently she was disposed to be slightly argumentative, sitting here
upon her own Chesterfield sofa in her own drawing-room, even with Serena.

"I wonder if she has--I mean I wonder whether Susan really has a more
impetuous nature," the latter rejoined, "or whether she is only more
wanting in self-control. I often think people get credit for strong
feelings, when it is only that they make no effort to control themselves.
And that is unfair. I never have been able to see why it was considered
so creditable to have strong feelings. They usually give a lot of
inconvenience to other people. I am not sure that it is not self-indulgent
to have strong feelings.--We had excellent places just opposite the Marble
Arch. Of course Lady Samuelson has a great deal of interest; and we saw
everything. In some ways I think, as a sight, the procession was
overrated. But I am glad I went. You can never tell whether anything is
worth seeing or not until you have seen it; and so I certainly might have
regretted if I had not gone. Still, I think you were quite wise in not
going, Rhoda, if you were likely to be upset; and then, as you say, it
must be unpleasant getting about if one is very stout. Of course, I cannot
really enter into that. I take after mamma's family. They are always
slender. But the Lovegroves often grow stout. George, of course, has, and
I should not be surprised if Susan did when she is older. But then Susan
and I are entirely different in almost everything."

"I suppose you have heard of our dear vicar being appointed to the new
bishopric of Slowby, Serena," Mrs. Lovegrove remarked. The amplitude, or
non-amplitude, of the family figure was beginning to get upon her nerves.

"Oh! dear, yes, of course I have," Serena answered with raised eyebrows
and a condescending expression of countenance. "Not that it will make very
much difference to me, I suppose. I am so little at home now. But
naturally people, hearing we knew the Nevingtons, came to us for
information about them. I don't think anybody had ever heard of Dr.
Nevington at Slowby, and so they were very glad to learn anything we could
tell them. Of course it is a very great rise for Dr. Nevington, though he
will only be a suffragan bishop. Still, he must be very much flattered,
after merely having a parish of this kind. Susan is very pleased at the
appointment. She wrote to Dr. Nevington immediately and has had a number
of letters from him. I was quite willing she should write, but she told
him how popular his appointment was in Midlandshire. And I thought that
was going rather far, because Susan has no real means of knowing whether
it is popular or not. She could only know that she thought she liked it
herself, and had praised him among her friends. And I wonder whether she
is right--I mean I wonder whether she really will like it. Of course Susan
has been very prominent and has had everything her own way with most of
the clergymen's wives in Slowby. I think that has been rather bad for
Susan and given her an undue idea of her own importance. Now naturally
Mrs. Nevington will be the head of everything and the clergymen's wives
will go for advice to her. I do not see how Susan can help disliking that.
And then Mrs. Nevington is said to be a very good public speaker. I am
perfectly certain Susan will dislike that. For I always observe that
people who speak a great deal themselves, like Susan, never get on well
with other good speakers."--She moved a little, throwing back the fronts
of her black beaded jacket--her complimentary mourning was scrupulously
correct--and adjusting the black silk tie at her throat. "Of course I may
be mistaken," she added, "but if you ask me, Rhoda, I fancy you will find
that Susan and Mrs. Nevington will not remain friends for very long."

"I am distressed to hear you express such an opinion, Serena," Mrs.
Lovegrove returned. The tone of mingled patronage and possession in which
her guest spoke of her own two particular sacred totems, vicar and
vicaress, incensed her highly. She wished she had not introduced the
subject of the Slowby bishopric.--"When the object in view is a truly good
one," she added, with some severity, "I should suppose all right-meaning
people would strive to sink petty rivalries and cooperate. I should quite
believe it would prove so in Susan's case."

"Of course she would not give Mrs. Nevington's speaking well as her
reason, if they did not remain on friendly terms," Serena returned
negligently. "But then people so very seldom give their real reasons for
what they do, Rhoda. Surely you must have observed that. I think they are
generally very willing to deceive themselves a good deal."

"I am afraid it is so with too many, Serena, and with some who would
be the last to own it when applied to themselves."--Then the wife
determined by a piece of daring strategy to carry the war into the enemy's
country.--"And that reminds me," she said. "I suppose you have heard that
Mr. Iglesias has left Trimmer's Green?"

"I do not the least know what right you have to suppose anything of the
kind, Rhoda," the lady addressed replied with a haste and asperity far
from regal. "You must have very odd ideas of the people I meet, either at
Lady Samuelson's or at Slowby, if you imagine I am likely to hear anything
about Mr. Iglesias from them. If I had not met him here, of course, I
should never have heard of him at all; and if I had never heard of him I
should have been spared a great deal. Still, after all that has occurred,
I can quiet see that Mr. Iglesias might find it better to leave Trimmer's
Green."

"Miss Eliza Hart, if you please, ma'am," this from the house-parlourmaid.

In accordance with established precedent, Serena should have risen from
the place of honour, upon the sofa, making room for the newcomer. But she
defied precedent. Acknowledging the said newcomer with the stiffest of
bows, she sat tight. Her hostess, however, proved equal to the occasion.

"Dear me, Miss Hart," she began, "I am sure you are quite the stranger.
Take that chair, will you not? And how is Mrs. Porcher? The numbers, I
trust, filling up again at Cedar Lodge? Mr. Lovegrove and myself did
truly sympathise in Mrs. Porcher's trouble in the autumn. Such a terrible
occurrence to have in your house! Of course very damaging, for a time, to
all prospects. And I shall always believe it was the great exertions he
made then that broke down poor Mr. Iglesias' health.--Yes, indeed, Miss
Hart, I regret to say he does remain very ailing. Mr. Lovegrove sees him
almost daily. He has run round to Holland Street now, has Georgie; but I
expect him back any minute.--We were just speaking of Mr. Iglesias--were
we not, Serena?--and I was about to tell Miss Lovegrove what a sweet
pretty house he has. You have seen it often no doubt, Miss Hart."

But here Serena arose, with much dignity, and retired in the direction of
the window.

"Pray do not think about me, Rhoda," she said over her shoulder, "or let
me interrupt your and your friend's conversation. I am going to see if the
carriage is here. Lady Samuelson said she might be able to send it for me.
She could not be sure, but she might. And I told her I would be on the
watch, as she objects to the horses being kept standing in this weather.
But pray do not think about me. Until it comes I can quite well amuse
myself."

Holding aside the lace curtain she looked out. Upon the rawly green grass
remnants of discoloured snow lay in unsightly patches, while the bare
branches of the plane-trees and balsam-poplars shuddered in the harsh
blast. The prospect was far from alluring, and Serena surveyed it with a
wrathful eye.

"Really, Rhoda's behaviour to me is most extraordinary," she said to
herself. "I had to mark my displeasure. For poor George's sake she ought
not to be allowed to go too far. She has grown so very self-assertive.
Last year her manner was much better. I suppose she and George have made
it up again. People who are not really ladies, like Rhoda, are always so
very much nicer when they are depressed. I wonder what has happened to
make George make it up with her!"

And then she fell very furiously to listening.

"We did talk it over, did Peachie Porcher and myself," the great Eliza was
saying, "for I do not deny, at the time of our trouble, a certain
gentleman came out very well. He may have had his reasons, but I will not
go into that, Mrs. Lovegrove. I am all for giving everybody his due. But
Peachie felt when he left it would be better the connection should cease
as far as visiting went. 'Should Mr. Iglesias call here, dear Liz,' she
said to me, 'I should not refuse to see him. But, after what has passed
and situated as I am, I cannot be too careful. And calling on a bachelor
living privately, with whom your name has been at all associated, must
invite comment. Throughout all,' she said, 'my conscience tells me I have
done my duty, and in that I must find my reward.' Very affecting, was it
not?"

"Yes," the other lady admitted, candour and natural goodness of heart
getting the better alike of resentment and diplomacy. "I always have
maintained there were many sterling qualities in Mrs. Porcher."

"So there are, the sweet pet!" Eliza responded warmly. "And I sometimes
question, Mrs. Lovegrove, whether a certain gentleman, now that he has cut
himself adrift from her, may not be beginning to find that out and wish
he had been less stand-offish and stony. Not that it would be any use now.
For, if he did not appreciate Peachie Porcher, there are other and younger
gentlemen, not a thousand miles from here, who do. I am not at liberty to
speak more plainly at present, as the poor young fellow is very shy about
his secret. A long attachment, and some might think it rather derogatory
to Peachie's position to entertain it. But straws tell which way the wind
blows; and a little bird seems to twitter to me, Mrs. Lovegrove, that if
Charlie Farge did come to the point--why--"

Miss Hart shook her leonine mane and laid her finger on her lip in an arch
and playful manner. But before her hostess could rally sufficiently from
the stupor into which this announcement plunged her to make suitable
rejoinder, a fine booming clerical voice and large clerical presence
invaded the room.

"How d'ye do, Mrs. Lovegrove? I come unannounced but not unsanctioned. I
met with your good husband in the street just now, and he encouraged me to
look in on you. Good-day to you, Miss Hart. All is well, I trust, with our
excellent friend Mrs. Porcher.--Ah! and here is Miss Serena Lovegrove.--An
unexpected piece of good fortune."

Promptly Serena had emerged from her self-imposed exile; and it was with
an air of assured proprietorship that she greeted the clergyman.

"Mrs. Nevington heard from your kind sister only this morning," he
continued. "Full of active helpfulness as usual, Mrs. Lovegrove.--She
proposes that we should quarter ourselves upon you and her for a few days,
Miss Serena, while we are seeking a temporary residence. She kindly gives
us the names of several houses which she considers worth inspection."

Here by an adroit flank movement, rapidly executed, Serena managed to
possess herself once again of the seat of honour upon the sofa, thereby
interposing a thin but impenetrable barrier between her hostess and the
latter's own particular fetish, the bishop-designate.

"You have enough room? I do not crowd you, Rhoda?" she remarked
parenthetically. Then turning sideways, so as to present an expanse
of neatly clad back and shoulder to her outraged relative, she
continued:--"I wonder which, Dr. Nevington--I mean I wonder which houses
Susan has recommended. Of course there is the Priory. But nobody has lived
in it for ages and ages. It is in a very low neighbourhood, close to the
canal and brickfields on the Tullingworth Road. I should think it was
dreadfully damp and unwholesome. And there is old Mrs. Waghorn's in Abney
Park. That is well situated and the grounds are rather nice. But the
reception-rooms are poor, I always think. Susan was fond of Mrs. Waghorn.
I cannot say I ever cared for her myself; but there is a tower to it, of
course."

"Ah! we hardly need towers yet, Miss Lovegrove. A 'suffering bishop'--you
recall the well-worn joke?--such as myself, must not aspire to anything
approaching castles or palaces, but be content with a very modest place of
residence."

Here his unhappy hostess, sitting quite perilously near the edge of the
sofa, craned round the interposing barrier.

"But that is only a matter of time, Dr. Nevington," she said, "surely.
There is but one voice all round the Green, and through the parish
generally, that this is but the first step for you; and that it will lead
on--though I am far from wishing to hasten the death of the present
archbishop--to the primacy."

"Hardly that, hardly that," he rejoined with becoming modesty. Yet the
speech was not unpalatable to him. "Out of the mouth of babes," he said to
himself, leaning back in his chair, and eyeing--in imagination--the chaste
outline of an episcopal apron and well-cut black gaiter, while visions of
Lambeth and Canterbury floated enticingly before him.--"Hardly that. This
is little more than an embryo bishopric. Still, though it is a wrench to
leave my dear old congregation, here in this wonderful London of ours, I
cannot refuse the call to a wider sphere of usefulness. My views as a
churchman are well known. I have never, even though it might have been
professionally advantageous to me to do so, attempted any concealment."

"No, truly," Rhoda put in, still balancing and craning. "Everyone, I am
sure, must bear witness you have always been most nobly outspoken."

"I trust so," he returned. "I have never disguised the fact that I take my
stand upon the Reformation Settlement. Therefore I cannot but think it a
most hopeful sign of the times that I should receive this call to the
episcopate.--Ah, here is Lovegrove. You find us deep in matters
ecclesiastical. I only hope I am not taxing your ladies' patience too
heavily by talking on such serious subjects.--In Slowby itself that grand
old stalwart, the late Dr. Colthurst--a positively Cromwellian figure--has
left a sound Protestant tradition. But I hear--your good sister confirms
the rumour, Miss Serena--that there is a strong ritualistic party at
Tullingworth. I shall deal very roundly with persons of that persuasion.
My conviction is that we must suit our teaching to the progressive
spirit of this modern world of ours. Personally I am willing, if
necessary, to sacrifice very much so-called dogma to conciliate our worthy
Nonconformist brethren; while I shall lose no opportunity of cutting at
the roots of those Romanising tendencies which are so lamentably and
insidiously active in the very heart of our dear old National Church."

While the great drum-like voice was thus rolling and booming, George
Lovegrove had shaken hands with Serena. But there was none of the
accustomed respectful enthusiasm in his greeting. He wore a preoccupied
and dejected air. For once he looked upon that pearl of spinsterhood with
a lack-lustre and indifferent eye.

"I wonder what can have happened to George," the lady in question said
to herself, in high displeasure. "I think his manner is really very
odd--nearly as odd as Rhoda's. I wish I had not come. But then if I had
not come I should have had no opportunity of showing Rhoda what intimate
terms Susan and I are upon with the Nevingtons. And I think it is right
she should know.--Oh! that detestable Miss Hart is going. What a
dreadfully vulgar purple blouse she has on! And her hair is so unpleasant.
It always looks damp and shows the marks of the comb. I wonder why hair of
that particular colour always does look damp." Here she bowed stiffly
without rising.--"I shall simply ignore George, and not speak to him. I
think that will be sufficiently marked. But I shall stay as long as Dr.
Nevington does--I don't for one moment believe Miranda Samuelson really
intended to send the carriage--so I will just wait and go when he goes.
I think I owe it to myself to show George and Rhoda that they cannot drive
me away against my will, however much they may wish to do so."

Having come to which amiable decision Serena turned her mind and
conversation to questions of house-hunting in Slowby. The subject,
however, began to pall, before long, upon her companion. Dr. Nevington
changed his position more than once. His replies became vague and
perfunctory, while his attention evidently strayed to the conversation
taking place at the other end of the sofa.

"I fear you did not find Mr. Iglesias very bright then to-day?" the wife
was inquiring in her kindliest tones.

George Lovegrove shook his head sadly. "No, my dear, I am sorry to say
not. I have been rather broken up. I will tell you all later."

The clergyman had risen.

"Iglesias?--ah yes," he said. "I remember meeting a person of that name
here once, eh, Lovegrove? One of our parochial oversights, unfortunately.
He proved to be a dweller. His appearance pleased me and I proposed to
call on him; and then in the press of my many duties the matter was
forgotten."

Serena had risen likewise. A spot of colour burned on either of her
cheeks. Her eyes snapped. She carried her small head high. Her presence
asserted itself quite forcibly. Her skirts rustled. At that moment she was
young and very passably pretty--an elegant spirited Serena of eighteen,
rather than a faded and, alas! spiteful Serena of close upon fifty.

"Oh! really, I think it was just as well you did not call, Dr. Nevington,"
she cried. "I do not think it would have been in the least suitable. Of
course I may be wrong, but I do not think you would have found anything to
like in Mr. Iglesias. There was so much that was never really explained
about him.--You know you acknowledged that yourself at one time, Rhoda.
But now you and George seem to have gone round again completely.--One
cannot help knowing he associated with such very odd people; and then the
way in which he turned Roman Catholic, all of a sudden, really was
disgraceful."

Dr. Nevington's cold, watchful glance steadied on to the speaker, then
travelled to the two other members of the little company in sharp inquiry.
George Lovegrove's innocent countenance bore an expression of agonised
entreaty, of yearning, of apology, yet of defiance. The corners of Rhoda's
mouth drooped, her large soft cheeks shook; yet she stood firm, her sorrow
tempered, and her whole warm-hearted person rendered stubborn, by virtuous
indignation.

"You forget yourself greatly, Serena," she said, "and when you have time
to think it over will repent having passed such cruel remarks. They are
liable to create a very wrong impression, and cannot fail to cause severe
pain to others."

For an appreciable space the clergyman hesitated. But Slowby and the
bishopric were ahead of him; Trimmer's Green and all its quaint
unimportant little inhabitants behind. She was tedious, no doubt; but her
sister promised to be very useful, so he threw in his lot with Serena.

"Ah, well, ah, well, for I my part I admire zeal, I must confess, Mrs.
Lovegrove," he said. "No doubt these terrible lapses will occur.
Superstition and bigotry will claim their victims even in our enlightened
century, and this free England of ours. I would not judge the case of this
poor fellow, Iglesias, too harshly. Race influences are strong; and we of
the Anglo-Saxon stock, with our enormous advantages of brain, and grit,
and hard-headed manliness of character, can afford--deeply though we
deplore their weakness and errors--to be lenient toward the less favoured
foreigner. Our mission is to educate him.--And this I think you should not
have forgotten, Lovegrove. You should have acted upon it. You should have
brought your unfortunate friend to me. I should have been quite willing to
give him half an hour, or even longer. A few facts, a little plain
speaking, might have saved him from more than I quite care to contemplate,
both here and hereafter.--However, good-bye to you, Mrs. Lovegrove. You
are starting, too, Miss Serena? Assure your good, kind sister, when you
write, how gladly Mrs. Nevington and I shall avail ourselves of her
proffered hospitality."

"Don't fret, don't take it too much to heart, Georgie dear," the wife said
soothingly later. "The vicar did seem very stern, but that was owing to
Serena. I am afraid she's a terrible mischief-maker, is Serena. She turns
things inside out so in saying them, that you do not recognise your own
words again. All this afternoon she was most trying. If Dr. Nevington
heard the real story, he would never blame you. You must not fret."

"I am not fretting about Dr. Nevington," he answered, "but about Dominic.
I am afraid we shall not have him with us very much longer, Rhoda."

"Oh! dear, oh! dear, you don't mean it? Never!" she cried in accents of
genuine distress. "Did you see him, Georgie?"

"No, Miss St. John was there."

The wife's large cheeks shook again.

"You know," she said, "I am never very partial to hearing anything about
that Miss St. John. Actresses are all very well in the theatre, I daresay,
but they are out of place in private houses. And from what I hear, though
there may be nothing really wrong with many of them, they are all sadly
free in their manners. I should be very hurt if you got into the habit of
frequenting their society much, Georgie.--But there, I'm sure I cannot
tell what is coming to all the women nowadays! You don't seem as if you
could be safe with any one of them. To think of a middle-aged person like
Mrs. Porcher, for instance, taking up with that little snip of a Farge,
and she old enough to be his mother!"

The wife bustled about the room straightening the chairs, patting cushions
into place, folding up the handkerchief which, in the interests of human
conversation, had been thrown over the cage of the all-too-articulate
parrot.

"I feel terribly stirred up somehow," she said, "what with the vicar, and
Serena, and all the talk about Roman Catholics and Protestants, and Mrs.
Porcher's engagement, too, and then this bad news of Mr. Iglesias--not but
that I am sure enough we shall meet him in heaven some day, if we can ever
contrive to get there ourselves in all this chatter and worry--"

She laid the handkerchief away in the drawer of the work-table.

"Such an afternoon," she declared, "what with one thing and another! I
always do say there's nothing for making unpleasantnesses like religion
and marriages.--But, thank God, through all of it you are spared to me,
Georgie."




CHAPTER XXXVIII


Outside, the slanting spring sunshine visited the sheltered strip of
garden in clear lights and transparent shadows. The small grass-plat
surrounding the rockery was brightly green. In the stone basin the surface
of the water trembled, glistening in broken curves of silver white. Along
the narrow border, beneath the soot-stained eastern wall, yellow and mauve
crocuses and yellow aconites opened wide, greeting the gentle warmth.
Trees in the neighbouring gardens were thick with bud. Busily the sparrows
and starlings came and went.

Within, the house--though not uncheerful, thanks to a scrupulous
cleanliness, warm colourings, and the peculiar mellowness which comes to
rooms and furnishings that, through prolonged association, have grown in a
great mutual friendliness of aspect--was very still, with the strange,
almost eerie, stillness which seems to listen and to wait.--A singular
stillness, from which the rough utilitarian activities of ordinary life
are banished, the rude noise of them suspended, while spiritual presences,
rare apprehensions, exquisite memories and hopes, mysterious invitations
of mingled alarm and ecstasy, come forth, taking on form and voice,
passing lightly to and fro--an enchantment, yet in a manner fearful from
the subtlety of their being and piercing intimacy of their speech.
Personality, that supreme moral and emotional factor in human life, must
of necessity create an atmosphere about it, permeated with its individual
tastes and mental attributes, distinct and powerful in proportion to its
individual distinction and its strength. And, without being overfanciful,
it may be confidently asserted that, for some weeks now, ever since indeed
the specialists--summoned in consultation at the good Lovegroves' and the
Lady of the Windswept Dust's urgent request--had pronounced the cardiac
affection, from which Dominic Iglesias suffered, likely to terminate
fatally in the near future, this living stillness, this alert
tranquillity, had been more or less sensible to all those who entered the
house, offering an arresting contrast to the multitudinous rush and
clamour of London without. But to-day the impression was no longer an
intermittent and fugitive one, as heretofore. It was constant and
complete, those spiritual visitants being, as it would seem, in full
possession; so that the hours appeared to move reluctantly, and as though
enjoining watchfulness, a carefulness and economy even in prevailing
repose, lest any remaining moment and the message of it should be
overlooked and lost.

It was characteristic of Iglesias that learning, in as far as the
consultant doctors could diagnose it, the exact conditions of his physical
state, he should refuse all experiment, however humane in intention or
plausible in theory. For he had no sympathy with the modern greediness and
worship of physical life, which is willing to sacrifice the decencies and
dignities of it to its possible prolongation. Courteously but plainly he
bade his advisers depart. The body, though an excellent servant, is a
contemptible master; and Iglesias proposed that, while his soul continued
to inhabit it, it should, as always before, be kept very much in its
place. It must remain unobtrusive, obedient, not daring to usurp, in its
present hour of failure and impediment, an interest and consideration to
which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire.
Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle
of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease,
yet maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed
self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death
with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing upright, is, rightly
considered, a very fine art, reflecting much credit upon the successful
professor of it.

And it was thus that, on the day in question, Mr. Iglesias sat waiting, in
the quaint irregularly shaped drawing-room of the old house in Holland
Street, himself the centre of that peopled stillness, that alert
tranquillity, which so strangely and sensibly filled it. Looking out of
the low window, he could see the shadow of the houses shrink and the light
broaden in the little garden below, as the sun travelled westward. Looking
into the room itself, the many familiar objects and rich sober colours of
it, quickened by a flickering of fire-light, were pleasant to his sense.
The images which passed before him, whether actually visible or not he
hardly knew, appeared beautiful. Words and phrases which occurred to him
were beautiful likewise. But all were seen and heard remotely, as through
some softly dazzling medium which, while heightening the charm of them,
produced a delicate confusion leaving him uncertain whether he really
slept or woke. More than once, not without effort, he roused himself; but
only to slip back again into the same state of fair yet gently distracted
vision.

At last the sound of opening casements in the dining-room underneath and
of a voice, touched with laughter, reached him.

"There, you absurdities--skip, scuttle, take exercise, catch birds,
improve your figures!" Poppy cried, clapping her hands encouragingly as
she stood at the head of the flight of iron steps down which, with her
foot, she shot the toy spaniels unceremoniously into the sunny garden
below.

The little creatures, welcoming their freedom, forgetful for once of their
languid overbred airs, scampered away yapping and skirmishing in the
merriest fashion about the grass-plat and flower-beds. The window closed
again and there followed a sound of voices, interjectional on Poppy's
part, low and continuous on that of Mrs. Peters, the house-keeper. Then a
pause, so prolonged that Iglesias, who had rallied all his energy and
prepared to rise and to go forward to meet his guest, sank away once more
into half-consciousness which neither actually sleeps or wakes. When he
came fully to himself Poppy was sitting on the low window-seat close
beside him. Her back was to the light and his sight was somewhat clouded,
so that at first he failed to see her clearly; but he knew that her mood
had changed and her laughter departed, through the sympathy of her touch,
she holding his hand as it lay along the arm of the chair. He would have
spoken, but she stopped him.

"No, dear man, don't hurry," she said. "I know already. Peters has just
told me, now, downstairs, that you received the Last Sacraments this
morning. That's why I didn't come up sooner. I couldn't see you directly,
somehow. I had--well, I had to get my second wind, dearly beloved, so to
speak. You see it's such a heavenly day that I couldn't help feeling
happier about you. I had persuaded myself those doctors were a pack of
croaking old grannies whose collective wisdom had eventuated in a wild
mistake, and that, given time and summer weather, you would be better
again--you know you have had ups and downs lots of times before--and that
then, when the theatre closes and I have my holiday, I'd carry you off,
somewhere, anywhere, back to your own fierce, passionate Spain, perhaps,
and nurse and coax and care for you till living grew so pretty a business
you really wouldn't have the conscience to quit."

Poppy's voice was sweet with caressing tones, sympathetic in quality as
her lingering touch.

"Haven't you, perhaps, been a little premature after all?" she said. "Has
it really and truly come to that? Mightn't you have put off those last
grim ceremonies a trifle longer, and let them wait?"

"They are not grim, dearest friend, but full of strong consolation,"
Iglesias answered, smiling. He began to see her face more clearly. Her
expression was tragic, a world of anguish in it, for all the restraint of
her manner and playful glibness of her speech. "Nor, in any case," he
added, "can they hasten the event."

"I'm not altogether sure of that," Poppy declared rebelliously.

"I could not quite trust myself as to what the day might bring forth,"
Iglesias continued. "In point of fact, I have gained strength as it has
gone on.--And so it seemed wisest and most fitting to ask for the
performance of those sacred rites while I was still of sound mind, and
ready in my perception of that in which I was taking part."

"You have suffered?" Poppy said.

"Nothing unendurable. The nights are somewhat wearisome, since I cannot
lie down, in ordinary fashion, to rest. But I sit here, or wander through
the quiet, kindly house, contentedly enough. And I am well cared for--have
no fear as to that. Peters is a faithful creature. She nursed my mother at
the last, and her presence is grateful to me, for association's sake."

Iglesias straightened himself up.

"There, there," he said, "do not be too sad. The road is not such a very
hard one to tread. The last few months have been the happiest I remember
since my childhood. Any anxieties I felt concerning you are set at rest.
You are famous, and will be more famous yet, and I know I shall live in
your remembrance while you live. It is no slight thing, after all, for a
man to have been loved so well by the two women whom he loved. And for the
rest, dearest friend, as one draws near to the edge of the great shadow,
which we call death, one begins to trust more and fuss less; looking to
the next step only, so that one may take it neither with faltering nor
with presumptuous haste."

"Ah!" Poppy cried, "that's all very well for you. But where do I come in?
I lose you."

Iglesias smiled, lifting his shoulders slightly and raising his hands.

"Yes," he said, "it seems that sorrow, here on earth, is always, sooner or
later, the guerdon of love. Why, I know not; but so it is, as the most
sacred and august of all examples testifies. Only let us be thankful, you
and I, that to us this parting, and the inevitable pain of it, comes while
love is still in its full strength, having endured nothing unworthy, no
shame, or diminution, or disillusionment. The more bitter the wrench, the
finer the memory, and the more desirable the meeting which lies ahead,
however far distant in time it may be and in difference of condition."

"Yes, dear man, yes, I dare say--no doubt," Poppy answered brokenly. "Only
I can't rise to these philosophic heights. I'm right here, don't you see,
my feet well on the floor, planted in brutal commonplace. I shall want
you--just simply I shall want you, and you won't be there, and I shall be
most cut-throat horribly lonely and sad. But, looking at you, still I
don't believe it. I won't believe it. I shall keep you a long while yet."

She leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek.

"Now I must go," she said, "if I'm to get any dinner before the theatre. I
would have liked to stay, and put my poor little understudy on, so as to
give her a chance. She's a nice little girl--not half stupid, and really
keen to learn and to work. But I can't. I'm in honour bound to appear
to-night. You see, it's our second century--the first one we could not
observe, because it came at the end of January just in the general
mourning--so there's an awful to-do and tomasha to-night, souvenir
programmes and I don't know what all, also a rather extra special
audience. It would be little too bad if I played them false. But," she
added, rising, "when it's over I shall come back--yes, I will, I will, I
tell you. Don't flatter yourself you can prevent me, beloved lunatic, for
you jolly well can't.--I shall come back directly the performance is over,
and watch with you, through the bad hours till the dawn."

Dominic Iglesias had risen, too. He crossed the room, going to the door
and holding it open for her; then, standing on the little landing, he
watched her as she went down the narrow crooked stairs. And so doing, it
came to him, with a movement of thankfulness and of satisfied pride, how
very fully in the past six months the Lady of the Windswept Dust had
realised and fulfilled all the finer promise of her complex nature. Just
as her figure had matured, retaining its admirable proportions and
suppleness while gaining in distinction and dignity, her mind had matured
likewise. Her splendid fearlessness was no longer that of naughty
dare-devil audacity, but of secure position and recognised success.
Indeed, she had grown into a somewhat imperial creature, for whom the
world, and rightly, is very willing to make place.

At the bottom of the flight Poppy paused, looking up and kissing her hand.

"Till to-night," she cried. "Now I go to herd those two small miseries,
W. O. and Cappadocia.--Take most precious care of yourself until I come
back, dear man. Good-bye and God keep you, till to-night."

Mr. Iglesias crossed the drawing-room, glad at heart, erect and stately as
in the fulness of health. For a minute or so he stood looking out into the
garden, at the stone basin full to the lip--in which the sparrows,
relieved of the presence of the toy spaniels, washed with much fluttering
of sooty wings--and at the spring flowers, beginning to close their
delicate blossoms as the sun declined towards its setting in the gold and
grey of the west. In the recovered stillness, those same spiritual
presences, rare apprehensions, exquisite memories, mysterious invitations,
once again obtained possession, coming forth, passing lightly to and fro,
filling all the place. In aspect and sentiment they were benign, all
fearfulness having gone from out them--they telling of fair things only,
of human relations unbroken by treachery or self-seeking, unsullied by
lust; telling, too, of godly endeavour faithfully to travel the road which
leads to the far horizon touched by the illimitable glory of the Uncreated
Light.

But presently Dominic Iglesias became aware that he was very, very tired.
He sat down in the chair again.

"Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy," he murmured, crossing himself. "I
think the day's work is over. I will sleep."

That night Poppy St. John played as she had never played before; and her
audience, taking her astonishing manifestation of talent as a compliment
to themselves, cried with her and laughed with her in most wholehearted
fashion.

Antony Hammond, in the stage box on the right, turned to Adolphus Carr,
his companion, saying:

"Did I really write such admirable drama as this? I have girded at that
term, 'creating a part,' as an example of the colossal vanity of the
actor, and his very inadequate reverence for his maker, the playwright.
But, I give you my word, after to-night I hide my diminished head. The
player and playing are greater than any fondest conception of mine, when I
put those words on paper."

And Lionel Gordon, his habitual imperturbability altogether broken up by
excitement, stamped up and down stammering:

"Ge-ge-hanna, gehanna, what possesses the woman? I'd tour creation with
her. She must be made to sign a three years' contract. If she can act like
this there's nothing less than a cool half-million sterling in her."

And Alaric Barking, lean and haggard, invalided home from South Africa,
escaping for one evening from the ministrations of gentle Lady Constance
Decies and his pretty _fiancee_, sat huddled together at the end of a
row at the back of the pit, hoping, "The deuce! nobody would see him,"
with a choke in his throat. He would love, honour, and cherish his pretty,
high-bred, innocent maiden; but Poppy's voice tore at his very vitals. And
he asked himself how had he ever borne to give her up, forgetting, as is
the habit of civilised man in such slightly humiliating circumstances,
that it was Poppy herself, not he, who loved and rode away.

Twice the curtain was raised at the end of the performance, and the Lady
of the Windswept Dust made her bow with the rest of the company.--Now she
could depart; thank heaven! she could go back to the strangely still
house in Holland Street and fulfil her promise to Dominic Iglesias to
watch with him till dawn. All through the play, the passion and excitement
and pathos and mirth of it, her anxiety had deepened, her yearning
increased, so that the joy of her public triumph was barred and seared
by intimate pain. Now she could go. Already the carpenters were beginning
their nightly work of destruction, metamorphosing the so-lately brilliant
stage into a vast unsightly cavern of gaunt timbers, creaking pulleys,
noisy mechanical contrivances, gaudy painted surfaces of canvas and paper,
piled-up properties, of uncertain lights and draughts many and chill.
Careless of all save that determination of going, Poppy moved away. But
still the unseen audience clamoured. A fury had taken it, a madness such
as will sometimes attack even the soberest and most aristocratic crowd,
excitement reacting upon itself and stimulating excitement, till the
demand which had begun in kindly enthusiasm became oddly violent, even
brutal, men and women standing up, applauding, drumming, shouting a single
name.

"There, it's over, thank the powers! Now let me get out of all this
infernal din," she said, putting her hands over her ears as she pushed
into the wings.

But Lionel Gordon met her, barring her passage, his face working with
nervous agitation, and caught hold of her unceremoniously by both arms.

"What's the matter?" she cried angrily. "I can't stay. I have a case of
illness on hand."

"Hang illness!" he answered. "My good girl, pull yourself together. Go
back. Don't be a blooming fool. Listen--it's you they're splitting their
throats for--yes, you--about the most fastidious audience in Europe
yelling like a pack of drunken bookies! Gehenna! you're the luckiest woman
living. You're made, great heavens, you're made!"

He dragged her aside, pushing her into the mouth of the narrow passage
between the curtain and the footlights, where the roar of the house and
the welter of faces met her like a breaking wave.

       *       *       *       *       *

Standing against the edge of the pavement in front of Mr. Iglesias' house,
in Holland Street, was a covered van. As Poppy drove up a couple of men
came down the steps, in the black and white of the moonlight. Their dark
clothing and somewhat sleek appearance were repulsive to her. She swept
past them, swept past Frederick holding open the door, and on up the
stairs. Her hands were encumbered by her trailing draperies of velvet and
silver tissue, and by an extravagant bouquet of orchids, lilies, and
roses, with long yellow satin streamers to it. She had not stayed even to
wash the grease paint off her face. Just as she was, the stamp of her
calling upon her, eager, fictitious, courageous, triumphant, pushed by a
great fear, she came. But in the doorway she faltered, set her teeth,
bowed her head, and paused.

For in the centre of the room a bier was dressed, and on either side of it
stood lighted tapers of brownish wax, in tall black and gold candlesticks.
At the foot, some distance apart, two low-seated rush-bottomed high-backed
_prie-dieu_ had been placed. Upon the one on the left a little nun
knelt, her loose black habit concealing all the outline of her figure. The
white linen pall was turned back, across the chest of the corpse, to where
the shapely long-fingered hands were folded upon an ebony and silver
crucifix. By some harsh irony of imagination Lionel Gordon's voice rang in
Poppy's ears: "My good girl, pull yourself together. Gehenna! you're the
luckiest woman living. You're made, great heavens, you're made!"--while,
blank despair in her heart, she went forward, the little nun looking up
momentarily from her prayers, and stood beside the bier. Beautiful in
death as in life, serene, proud, austere, but young now with the eternal
youth of those who have believed, and attained, and reached the Land of
the Far Horizon, Dominic Iglesias lay before her.

Presently a sound of sobbing broke up the stillness, and turning, Poppy
descried good George Lovegrove, sitting in the dusky far corner of the
room, his knees wide apart, his shiny forehead showing high above the
handkerchief he pressed against his eyes. She backed away from the corpse,
as in all reverence from the presence of a personage august and sacred.
Coming close to him, she laid her hand gently upon George Lovegrove's
shoulder. "Go home, my best beetle," she said, very tenderly. "You're worn
out with sorrow. Come back in the morning if you will. I promised Dominic
I would watch with him till the dawn. I keep my promise."

Then the Lady of the Windswept Dust laid her extravagant bouquet with its
yellow streamers, on the floor, at the foot of the bier; and kneeling upon
the vacant _prie-dieu_, beside the little nun, buried her painted
face in her hands and wept.




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